Three employees of the Ghana Highway Authority (GHA) in the Brong-Ahafo Region have been arraigned before a Sunyani High Court (Commercial Division) for allegedly stealing GH¢1,288,824 from two toll stations in the region.
The pleas of the accused person, Rexford Bosompem, a Senior Accountant, Amidu Adams, a toll collector and Michael Bediako, a toll supervisor, were not taken by the court presided over by Patrick Baye.
The court remanded Bediako, a retired supervisor at the Bechem toll station, into prison custody to reappear on Thursday, February 15, 2018.
Adams and Bosompem were not in court when the case was called on Monday.
The presiding judge ordered their sureties who represented them to produce the two accused at the next hearing.
The Ghana News Agency (GNA) investigations revealed that in May 2016, the Financial Division of the GHA embarked on an exercise to reconcile toll revenues collected at all toll stations nationwide with the toll lodgments at GCB Bank.
In the process, the division discovered some purported lodgments of toll revenues for a couple of months from Bechem and Fiapre toll stations had not reflected on the Bank statements of the designated Road Fund bank account with the GCB.
The GHA directed its Internal Audit Division to conduct a special toll revenue collection and lodgment audit for the period January 2013 to April 2016 at the two toll stations.
The GNA gathered that Bosompem and Adams allegedly failed to lodge an amount of GH¢730,498.00, being part of toll revenues collected at the Fiapre toll station into the Road Fund Account with the bank, while Bediako did not lodge an amount of GH¢55,352.50.
The accused persons, however, managed to get 230 pieces of forged GCB deposit slips as evidence of their bank lodgments to the Finance Division of the GHA.
A report was made to the Brong-Ahafo Regional Police Command and the accused persons were subsequently arrested and granted police enquiry bail.
GNA