Convicted ECG Staff fight for bail pending Appeal

Perfect Ama Agbo, an Electrical Foreman, who was jailed three years last month for stealing Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) Transformers worth GH? 1,660,000.00 has appeared before an Accra High Court for bail pending appeal.

Perfect is also appealing against her three- year jail term handed over to her and one Eric Yaw Darko a driver of ECG by an Accra Circuit Court.

An accomplice Samuel Kofi Frimpong a security man of ECG is however at large.

When the matter was called before the High Court presided over by Mr Justice Francis Amo Yartey, the judge ordered perfect’s Counsel to ensure that the two dockets are consolidated.

According to the court it has two dockets with application for bail pending an appeal and the substantive appeal against conviction.

It further ordered the defence counsel Mr Thomas Ward Brew to properly file the processes at the court and serve Mr Paul Assibi Abariga, ECG Manager of Prosecution.

Mr Abariga told the court that he had not been served with the court processes.

The court therefore ordered defence to ensure that Mr Abariga is served and adjourned the matter to August 25.

Perfect and her accomplices were convicted by an Accra Circuit Court on charges of Conspiracy to commit crime and stealing 83 Tusco Transformers belonging to ECG.

They were said to have stolen the 83 Tusco transformers at the company’s warehouse in Tema between January 2013 and April 2014 and sold them to individuals within the country.

They were however nabbed following intelligence gathering by the Police.

The facts of the case were that Eric Yaw Darko, a driver, and Perfect Ama Agbo, an electrical foreman, are said to have acted together with the security man of the ECG.

The three, who are with the ECG Material Division in Tema, stole the transformers from the warehouse and sold them to individuals.

Perfect, the electrical foreman is said to have defaced the transformers by removing the name plate and other identification marks on them before selling them.

They were charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit crime and stealing.

At the end of the trial, the Accra Circuit Court, presided over by Ms Ellen Amoah, found them guilty after the prosecution had been able to make a case against them.

They sentences are to run concurrently.

Prosecuting, Mr Abariga, said the Tusco transformers were detected missing from the warehouse of the Tema Materials Division during a stock-taking exercise.

During the exercise, he said, it was found that the transformers had been stolen from the warehouse between January 2013 and April 1, 2014.

When the case was reported to the police, he said, investigations revealed that some ECG workers were offering ECG transformers for sale to private individuals.

The police, he said, mounted surveillance, leading to the arrest of a man (name withheld) at the Trade Fair area, La in Accra. The man later served as a witness in the case.

Mr Abariga said the witness was arrested with a transformer without any inscriptions but it was suspected to be an ECG transformer. When the witness was questioned about the transformer, he said it was given to him by his sister, whom he identified as Perfect Ama Agbo, to be sold to a buyer she had already spoken to by phone.

A document in respect of another transformer which was also in the possession of the witness was also retrieved.

The court heard that the witness led the police to a house at Tsado, near the Trade Fair site, where another Tusco transformer was found without a serial number and name plates.

Subsequently, Mr Abariga said, Darko and Perfect were arrested after investigations had established that they were behind the missing transformers, but Frimpong, who was in charge of the Hi-Fabric Warehouse from where the transformers were stolen, escaped arrest.

Further police intelligence gathered, he said, revealed that four of the transformers were delivered to an individual at Dansoman by Frimpong. Seven of the transformers, he said, had since been retrieved.