William Ato Essien
Dr. Tetteh Nettey, one of the two other persons standing trial alongside founder and Chief Executive Officer of defunct Capital Bank, William Ato Essien, yesterday told an Accra High Court how the latter failed to give him copies of documents on an agreement which is a subject matter of the trial.
The accused, who is a former Managing Director of MC Management Services, a company owned by Ato Essien, had opened his defence and denied the charges leveled against him by the prosecution, which includes conspiracy and stealing from the defunct bank.
Dr. Nettey during cross-examination by Evelyn Keelson, a Chief State Attorney, told the court that the GH¢32.5 million shares he held in collapsed Capital Bank was done in trust for Ato Essien and there are documents to prove same.
He, however, told the court that Mr. Essien failed to give him copies of the agreement despite several attempts to get him to release copies to him.
“I held shares in trust for the first accused (Ato Essien) to the tune of GH¢32.5 million. We signed documents like we did in the case of MC Management Services but unfortunately the first accused did not give me my copies though I asked for that severally,” Dr. Nettey claimed.
This led the trial judge, Justice Eric Kyei Baffuor, a Court of Appeal judge sitting as an additional High Court judge, to ask the accused at the end of the prosecution’s cross-examination why he did not confront Ato Essien on the matter while he was in the witness box.
“I have proof that I personally asked for the documents. I signed the documents in his office and he gave the documents to Prince Aggrey for photocopy, and that was the end of the document,” the accused answered.
Dr. Nettey together with the other accused persons have been accused of moving a total of GH¢130 million from Capital Bank to MC Management Services through All Time Capital and Nordia, which was eventually used as capitalisation for Sovereign Bank.
Mrs. Keelson suggested to the accused person that, as the Executive Director of Sovereign Bank and a shareholder, he knew very well that the money used for the capitalisation of the bank came from Capital Bank and not the shareholders of the bank.
Dr. Nettey replied that he had no way of knowing that the monies came from Capital Bank as MC Management received cheques from Nordia Capital.
He added that he held shares in trust for Ato Essien but the other shareholders “told me and took steps to prove to me that the monies were theirs and like I said earlier, the first set of monies that came to MC Management Services came in the form of cheque and swifts from Nordia, and there was no way whatsoever I knew the monies were from Capital Bank.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Nettey somewhat shocked the court when he stated that his signature was forged on two commercial papers; one on October 13, 2013, for an amount of GH¢100 million which was co-signed by Rev. Fitzgerald Odonkor, and another on November 11, 2015 for GH¢30 million as well as three other documents.
“These documents are fake. They are fictitious and I did not draft them or type them or print them out. They are not mine,” he claimed.
But Mrs. Keelson put it to him that his claims are nothing but afterthoughts.
He closed his defence and the court adjourned the trial to April 7, for Rev. Fitzgerald Odonkor to open his defence.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak