A Former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Microfinance and Small Loans Centre (MASLOC), Sedinam Tamakloe has been sentenced to 10 years in prison with hard labour.
The Former Chief Operating Officer of MASLOc, Daniel Axim has also been jailed for five years with hard labour.
The two were found guilty on 78 counts of causing financial loss to the state, stealing, conspiracy to steal, money laundering, and causing loss to public property in contravention of public procurement law.
The trial of two individuals began in 2019. The state presented six witnesses in total during the trial. The first accused person, Sedina Tamakloe, was tried in absentia as she had fled the country after being given permission by the court to seek medical attention abroad. The second accused person, however, appeared in court and testified but did not call any witnesses.
The convictions stem from misappropriation of funds allocated for MASLOC activities between 2013 and 2016. In one instance, the convicts withdrew GH₵500,000 as a loan from Obaatampa Savings and Loans company, demanding a refund when the institution refused to provide a 24% interest rate. Although evidence of the refund was presented, it was not reflected in MASLOC's accounts.
The duo was also found guilty of misappropriating over GH¢1.7 million allocated for a sensitisation exercise, with only a fraction of the funds used for the intended purpose. Similarly, funds disbursed for victims of a fire incident at Kantamanso were not fully distributed, with a significant portion misappropriated by the accused.
According to the facts of the case, MASLOc was expected to provide 20 Ghana cedis each for 85,300 beneficiaries amounting to the 1.7m cedis. However, only 1,300 cedis was spent for the intended purpose with the rest being misappropriated by the convicts.
Equally only 579,800 out of 1.4 million cedis was disbursed to the victims of an inferno at Kantamanso with the two accused persons appropriating the remainder.
The case also involved the purchase of vehicles and Samsung phones for MASLOC, with funds exceeding market prices at the time.
Despite being bought in bulk, evidence suggested that the amounts paid were higher than prevailing market rates.
