The imprisonment of the Chief Executive Officer of the defunct Capital Bank, William Ato Essien, sends a strong message to corporate Ghana and the financial sector that wrongdoing will not go unpunished, according to the Director of Business Operations at Dalex Finance, Mr. Joe Jackson. He also commended the effectiveness of the legal system in Ghana.Mr.

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Jackson expressed his satisfaction, saying, “it is a really good thing not just for the financial sector but all of corporate Ghana. So in that sense showing out that our legal system works, showing that you can’t get away with the wrong thing., that is wonderful”.However, he voiced concerns about the state's inability to recover all the funds from Ato Essien before his imprisonment.

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Despite reaching an agreement to refund GHC90 million to the state, Essien only managed to return GHC37 million, leading to the imposition of the custodial sentence.Mr. Jackson highlighted the need to retrieve the misused funds, stating, “I am filled with sadness, the sadness is on two levels. Number one is that, more than a conviction we really need to get our money back.

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The public purse was raided to resolve this issue and if there is an establishment that funds have been misused, we have to get the money back and so the conviction just shows that we haven’t still been able to the money back. For me that is sad.

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“The second level of sadness is this;  Capital Bank represented local indigenous ownership of our financial sector, nobody is going to grow this country or our financial sector for us, eventually Ghanains have to own it so that we can do the best for the country and not to ship the money out or ship the money in depending on where you stand.

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”He also expressed a second level of sadness regarding the loss of Capital Bank, which represented local indigenous ownership in the country's financial sector. He emphasized the importance of Ghanaians owning and developing the financial sector for the benefit of the country.

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Deputy Attorney-General Alfred Tuah-Yeboah explained that although Ato Essien has been incarcerated, the state managed to retrieve GHC37 million from him before the sentencing. He stated that if Essien had been imprisoned earlier, when the agreement to repay the money had not been reached, the state would not have recovered this sum.

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Tuah-Yebuah added that the state would be looking into whether Essien could pay the remaining amount, but if he doesn't, he will have to serve the 15-year prison term.He said, “we were expecting that he would go by the agreement that we had but unfortunately on his part, he could not fulfill his part of the bargain.

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As we speak he has been able to pay close to about 37 million Cedis and because of his inability to pay the rest, per the agreement that we had, the court had the right to sentence him to a prison term and the court just did that.

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“I am yet to get the full complement of the orders of the court, now that he has been imprisoned if he gets the money to pay that is another ballgame to look at because after a court has given its ruling or judgment the court becomes functus officio, so my expectation is that when he pays then he goes into mitigation when he wants to appeal the sentence.“Let’s hope that he gets the money to pay.

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Let us also add that even if he is going to serve the 15 years Ghanaians have also benefited somehow because at least 37 million Cedis has been paid to the state. if he had been sentenced last year we wouldn’t have even recovered this.”

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