An Accra High Court has accepted the GH¢90 million repayment terms on Ato Essien’s restitution deal after previously rejecting the settlememt deal.

Last week, the court, presided over by Justice Eric Kyei Baffour rejected the settlement deal between state prosecutors and the founder of the non-functioning Capital Bank, Mr Ato Essien.

Justice Eric Kyei Baffour, a Justice of Appeal, who sat as an additional High Court Judge, rejected the agreement, indicating that the amount agreed to be paid was not good enough, and adjourned the case to December 13, for the parties to address the court on the legal basis of the terms of the agreement.

Justice Eric Baffour stated that Mr Ato Essien took the money in 2015 when the cedis to dollar exchange rate was GH¢3.79 pesewas and therefore if Mr Essien wanted to refund the money he should pay it at the current exchange rate of GH¢13 and also pay interest. According to the judge, if he accepted the agreement in its current form, it meant people who had committed crimes would be made to profit from it.

In court on Tuesday December 13, Deputy Attorney General Alfred Tuah Yeboah argued that the funds were state funds as the defunct capital bank has been taken over by the state and state funds expended to pay the monies of depositors.

Counsel of Ato Essien justified the settlememt deal arguing that the state managed to get an extra GHC 30 million in addition to the 56 million Mr. Ato Essien agreed to have stolen.

Justice Baffour after reviewing the arguments of the parties accepted the restitution deal. The accused had since pleaded guilty to the charges of stealing and money laundering.

Background

Ato Essien and two others have been on trial for the past three years for their involvement in the collapse of Capital Bank. The prosecution had also accused Mr. Essien of misappropriating GH¢620 million liquidity support extended by the Bank of Ghana to help keep the bank afloat.

Mr Essien is standing trial with Fitzgerald Odonkor, a former MD of Capital Bank and the MD of MC Management Services, a company said to be owned by Essien and Tettey Nettey.

The prosecution accused the three persons of engaging in various illegal acts that led to the dissipation of a chunk of the GH¢620 million liquidity support given to the Capital Bank by the BoG between June 2015 and November 2016.

Capital Bank was one of the first banks that collapsed during a massive clean-up of financial institutions by the BoG which started in 2017. On August 14, 2017, its licence and that of UT Bank were revoked by the BoG, after the BoG had declared them insolvent.

The BoG allowed the state-owned bank, the GCB Bank, to acquire the two banks in order to protect depositors’ funds and also enable them to stay afloat. The hurricane that swept through the banking sector due to the collapse of the two banks further heightened in August 2018 when the central bank collapsed five other indigenous banks and merged them into one entity — Consolidated Bank, Ghana.