July 28, 2015 By Hawa Amara
Internal Auditor at the United Bank for Africa (UBA), Hassanatu Kallon, yesterday testified against Financial Control Officer Ansumana Kpange, who is accused of pilfering from the bank’s profit and loss accounts the sum of Le326 million.
Ms. Kallon, who is third prosecution witness, told Magistrate Mohamed Seray-Wurie presiding at the Magistrates’ Court No. 1 that the accused was her co-worker. She told the court her boss in Nigeria requested that she review three suspected accounts – Mary Laurel Barley, Henrietta S. Kamara and Abdulai G. Kpange – on 15 June this year.
The witness revealed that in the course of the review, she discovered credits in two separate accounts operated by the accused and another owned by Emmanuel Kpange, a child, but also operated by the accused person.
“All credits into the above accounts were coming from the bank’s various profit and loss accounts; I thus requested for the account opening documents of the three accounts and I observed that the next of kin for those accounts was the accused person,” she told the court.
The witness said monies were debited from the profit and loss accounts into the three accounts belonging to Barley, Kamara and Kpange, spanning 14 February 2014 to 15 May, 2015.
The transaction documents were tendered as Exhibit G1-2, following which the magistrate adjourned the matter to 3 August for further testimony.
The accused was arraigned to answer to 72 counts of conspiracy to defraud contrary to law, larceny by servant, transferring proceeds of unlawful activities and concealing unlawful activities, contrary to section 5(1) (a) & (b) of the Anti-Money Laundering and Combating of Financial Terrorism Act 2012.
According to police prosecutor Sergeant 922 John Dumbuya, the accused on dates between 1 May, 2014 and 31 December, 2014 with intent to defraud, stole the sum of three hundred and twenty-six million, three hundred and ninety-three thousand, thirty-two Leones and seventy cents (Le326,393,32,70.00) from the profit and loss accounts of UBA in Freetown.
The prosecution also alleges that the accused – between 1 April, 2014 and 30 May, 2015 – transferred proceeds of crime in the sum of thirty-one million, one hundred and one thousand, eight hundred and ninety-seven Leones and four cents (Le31,101,897.04) from UBA’s profit and loss account No. 680043234 into an account held by a certain Laureh Yeama Barley at the same bank on Charlotte Street in Freetown.