An Accra High Court has granted a GH¢200m bail to defunct Beige Bank CEO Michael Nyinaku for his role in the collapse of Beige Bank.
The accused, who was hauled before the court on Tuesday, November 8, pleaded not guilty to multiple charges of stealing and money laundering brought against him by the Attorney General.
Deputy Attorney General Alfred Tuah Yeboah told the court the alleged crimes were discovered following investigations into the bank after its license was revoked and placed under receivership by the Bank of Ghana.
Making a case for bail, counsel for the accused, Addo Tuah, told the court the accused had been religiously appearing before the various investigative bodies, including the Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO) and had also been cooperating with investigators for more than two years.
He, therefore, assured the court that Mr Nyinaku would show up whenever he was needed for trial.
The Deputy Attorney General did not oppose the bail application.
After listening to the parties, the presiding judge Justice Afia Serwaa Asare Botwe, granted the accused person bail in the sum of GH¢200 million with three sureties, two of which must be justified.
The two are to deposit their documents covering landed properties worth the GH¢ 200 million bail bond.
The properties are to be valued by either the Land Valuation Division or the Architecture and Engineering Services Limited.
He is also expected to deposit his passport at the court registry and report to the police every Monday and Friday.
Facts of the case
The facts before the court indicate that between 2017 and 2018, the accused person caused the transfer of monies held in fixed deposit accounts with Beige Bank to Beige Capital Asset Management Limited (BCAM) without the knowledge and consent of the customers.
Investigations also revealed that the accused person, between 2017 and 2018, caused the transfer of 35 fixed investments of 23 customers of Beige Bank totalling GH¢141, 042,348.92 to Beige Group, a company wholly owned by the accused and also doubles as the majority shareholder of Beige Bank.
According to the prosecution, investigations further revealed that sometime in March 2018, the accused person caused a fictitious second account to be opened in the name of First Africa Savings and Loans (FASL), an existing account holder with Beige Bank, without the knowledge of the Board and management of FASL.
He is alleged to have caused the transfer of GH¢320 million from various Beige Bank customers’ accounts into the account of BCAM held with Beige Bank.
The GH¢320 million was subsequently transferred from the BCAM account held with Beige Bank into a fictitious FASL account that had been opened in Beige Bank’s books on the instructions of the accused.
The prosecution said between March 2018 and August 2018, GH¢21,123,270.96 out of the ¢320 million is said to have been transferred from the fictitious FASL bank account to some two individuals and 10 companies, nine of which were related to the accused person on the instructions of the accused person.
These are the facts for which the defunct Beige Bank CEO is in court.
Meanwhile, the court has directed the Attorney General’s office to file all evidence and disclosures it intends to rely on for the case by December 9.
The case has been adjourned to December 22, 2022, for Case Management Conference (CMC).
Background
Beige Bank was one of the banks that collapsed after a massive clean-up of the financial institutions by the Bank of Ghana (BoG) starting in 2017.
Sovereign Bank, Royal Bank, Beige Capital, Construction Bank and Unibank were forced to fold after they failed to raise the needed capital to prove they could stay afloat.
The hurricane that swept through the banking sector due to the collapse of the two banks heightened in August 2018 when the central bank collapsed five other indigenous banks, including Beige Bank and merged them into one entity — Consolidated Bank, Ghana.