EOCO Board Chairman Accused Of Bribery

Professor Serbeh-Yiadom, a co-shareholder of the Stanbic Bank Ghana Limited, has accused Justice J.C. Amonoo-Monney of receiving bribe and delivering judgement against him in a matter between him and Stanbic Bank Ghana Limited.

In a petition to the Chief Justice, Justice Theodora Georgina Wood, which was copied to the media, the Governor of Bank of Ghana, the Media Commission and the Commissioner for the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice, Professor Serbeh-Yiadom stated that Justice Amonoo-Monney handled a case involving him (Kwame C. Serbeh-Yiadom) and Stanbic Bank Limited from May 25, 2001 to July 31, 2002, at the end of which he set October 28, 2002, for judgement.

He said on that day, he was in court, but Justice Amonoo-Monney did not sit, claiming that he was not ready with the judgement, and that when ready, the date for the delivery of the judgement would be communicated to both parties in the dispute.

According to him, for about eight months, the date for the judegement never came till he reported the matter to the late Chief Justice, Justice Edward Wiredu.

Apparently induced by his report to Chief Justice Wiredu, a date was fixed by Amonoo-Monney for February 27, 2003 for the delivery of the judgement.

According to him, “Amonno-Monney gave a faulty judgement that did not consider the overwhelming evidence from witnesses and exhibits, etc.”

He said he was aware that the judgement “in a strange twist of circumstance, was jointly crafted between my own lawyers, LEXCOM Associate and the defendant’s lawyers and same was delivered to the trial judge to pronounce.”

He stated that he was again aware that “Amonoo-Monney received financial gratification from the defendant for co-operating with the unethical plan,” and that the bribe money was handed over to Amonoo-Monney’s brother-in-law, who gave the money to his sister (Amonoo-Monney’s wife).

According to him, he has referred to the judgement as the “the Kitchen Transfer Judgement” in his book entitled COLOTHEID, which is available online at www.colotheid.com.

He has also maintained that it is the second time he is lodging a complaint of unethical behaviour against Justice Amono-Monney. The first time he lodged the complaint was in September, 2003, and it “passed without a response from the judiciary.” Mr. Justice Amonoo-Money, now retired, is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Economic and Organised Crime Unit (EOCO).

Meanwhile, the date on Prof. Serbeh-Yiadom’s petition letter is dated Wednesday, 30th June, 2011. When his attention was drawn to it, he said it was a typographical error and that the date should have read Wednesday, 30th March, 2011. In a related development, Professor Serbeh-Yiadom is also accusing the Appeal Court Registrar/Registry of frustrating his efforts to seek an appeal against a judgement delivered against him in the case titled Union Mortgage Bank Limited versus Kwame C. Serbeh-Yiadom.

The judgement, he said, was delivered in 1997 by Mrs. Justice Vida Akoto-Bamfo, then a High Court Judge.

According to him, his lawyers filed a notice of appeal against the judgement in July 1997, and he personally followed the “process of putting the proceedings together, and by June 1999, it was ready and transferred to the Court of Appeal”.

However, all efforts from that time up to today to get the appeal heard and determined had proved futile.

He said he had always been told by the Appeal Court Registrar/Registry that “both the docket and the proceedings had gone missing.”

In another development, information reaching The Herald indicate that Starwin Pharmaceutical Company, one of the eleven prospective investors who deposited monies for shares in Stanbic Ghana Limited, in 1996, has decided to divest its interest in the company.

This intention, according to our source, Professor Kwame Serbeh-Yiadom, was conveyed by the company’s representative to this year’s annual general meeting of Stanbic Bank held on March 29, 2011 in the bank’s head office.

The Herald gathered that the meeting was also attended by the Registrar-General’s Department as administrators of the estate of the late E.H. Boohene, who at the time of his death, was the Executive Chairman of Starwin.

The story has it that in March of 1996, Mr. E. H. Boohene and ten other investors were to become shareholders upon Professor Serbeh-Yiadom and Alhaji El-Aziz transferring or selling some of their shares.

However, by November 1996, when the banking license was issued, Alhaji El-Aziz, in collaboration with the prospective investors, sidelined Serbeh-Yiadom, abandoned the tentative restructured shareholding agreement, and embarked upon restructuring the company to suit their own whims and caprices.

As expected, a dispute ensured, preventing two vital statutory requirements from being carried out.

These were execution of deeds of transferes of shares to the prospective investors and the proper completion and submission of Forms 3 and 4 for the issue of Certificate to Commerce Business.

Readers may recall the irregular methods Alhaji El-Aziz employed in deceiving the court of Mrs. Justice Vida Akoto Bamfo to rule in the case of the business certificate and the fact that till today the company has been operating without a Certificate to Commence Business.

In the case of the deeds of share transfer, Prof. Serbeh-Yiadom said none was ever done.

That means “essentially, the two original shareholders never transferred any shares and that none of the eleven prospective investors became shareholders.”

“And this certain possibility,” said Prof. Serbeh-Yiadom, “could be what Starwin may be running away from for, there is no doubt that, the sale of the Stanbic Bank share at today’s quotation will fetch more than the equivalent face value of the 14-year-old cedi deposit, even with interest.”

“Perhaps others will follow suit,” said the Professor, adding that he saw the move as an evidence of the awareness of the so-called shareholders that they had been all this time ‘mere depositors”.