Ex-Auditor General In Court For Alleged Embezzlement of $1.6m

A charge of stealing has been preferred against the former Auditor and Accountant General, Osei Tutu Prempeh and the Assistant Director of Audit in charge of United Nations Imprest Account operated in Ghana, Joseph Henry Dadzie.

The two, who have already made two appearances before the court, will appear again on July 12. The tribunal has granted them bail in the sum of 600 million cedis with two sureties each to justify. The two are said to have fraudulently withdrawn various sums of money totalling over one million dollars from the UN Imprest Account held at the Bank of Ghana, between 1997 and 2000.

Investigations by the Ghanaian Times, a state-owned daily reveal that the Auditor General fraudulently withdrew a total of four hundred and seventy one thousand, four hundred and sixty-six dollars ($471,466) between 1997 to the year 2000.

During the same period he is alleged to have made a total payment of one million and fifty eight thousand, seven hundred and eighty two dollars ($1,058,782) out of the imprest account to some unknown persons.

The former Auditor-General is alleged to have withdrawn a further twenty four thousand five hundred and fifty six dollars ($24,556) to purchase a number of tickets for his wife Pamela to travel to the United States of America on so many occasions.

Dadzie “wantonly abused” the imprest account by withdrawing a total of one hundred and ninety three thousand eight hundred and eleven dollars ($193,811).

When contacted as to whether the BNI had the power to investigate the UN Imprest Account in Ghana, a source told the Times that the government, with Ghana's Consolidated Fund opened the account. "It is, therefore, the Ghanaian tax payer's money."

"The account belongs to the government and can, therefore, be investigated by the BNI", the source said.