By Fatima Kpaka
Mustapha Koroma, a worker at Eco Bank Sierra Leone Limited, was denied bail by Magistrate Mark Ngegba of Pademba Court No 1 when he made his first appearance on 53 counts of embezzlement contrary to section 17(1) (b) of The Larceny Act of 1916.
The accused is alleged to have stolen monies bit by bit from the accounts of different customers which sum up to over Le400 million.
The chargesheet indicates that the accused from 7th to 23rd February 2023 at the Eco Bank Lumley branch in Freetown, fraudulently embezzled four hundred and nine million, two hundred thousand leones (Le 409,200,000) from the accounts of different customers at the account of Eco-bank Microfinance outlet.
In his testimony, David Mohamed Bangura said he is the Head of the Finance department at the bank, and deals with operations and do internal investigation.
He recognized the accused as a service worker of the bank at their Lumley branch, Regent Road.
He added that on the above dates, he was at the bank when he was informed about the alleged fraud, adding that he was brief about the account of customers and the amount of monies that were withdraw from their accounts.
He said that, the CSO of the bank told him that a customer went to the bank to withdrew money from his account but his account was empty. He said that he called the customer who confirmed to them that he was having money in his account, but staff at the bank told him that his account was empty and did not know what went wrong.
At this juncture, Magistrate Ngegba said time has far been spent and the witness will continue his testimony on the next adjourned date.
Defence counsel A. Kamara applied for bail on behalf of the accused saying that he will not jump bail neither will he interfere with prosecution witnesses.
Magistrate Mark Ngegba did not grant the accused bail. The matter comes up again on April 24, 2023.