JUDGMENT OF AZU CRABBE C.J.
He delivered the judgment of the court. The appellant, Joseph Erskine Ampah, and one Augustus Evans Kwamina Browne, were jointly charged before the Circuit Court, Accra, on twenty counts with the offence of stealing contrary to section 124 of the Criminal Code, 1960 (Act 29). The relevant facts out of which this appeal arises can be stated shortly. The appellant and Browne were the executive director and accountant respectively of the Ghana Chamber of Mines. Browne had authority, either together with the appellant or one Colonel Bean, to sign cheques for and on behalf of the Chamber. During the period 1 July 1971 to April 1973, the appellant and Browne, to the exclusion of Colonel Bean, exercised their right to sign cheques for and on behalf of the Chamber and were able thereby to convert various sums of money, totalling ¢142,321.74, belonging to the Chamber to their own use. The moduso perandi of the two men has been vividly described in the judgment appealed against reported in [1976] 1 G.L.R. 403 at p. 406 as follows:
"The method employed by the appellants looked rather simple but ingenious. They used two agents in the operation, namely, a Mr. E. Q. Hammond and a firm known as Kweks Agencies. Cheques coming from outside and drawn in favour of the Chamber were endorsed by the appellants and made payable into the accounts of either Kweks Agencies or E. Q. Hammond. I should observe that Kweks Agencies was a private firm registered in Ghana by the first appellant in the name of a Mr. Alfred Martin. So that, officially and on record, the proprietor of the firm was the said Alfred Martin; but in reality the first appellant was its owner. E. Q. Hammond was a pensioner who was personally employed by the first appellant as a foreman to supervise the construction of a private dwelling-house of the first appellant.
After the cheques which were intended for the Chamber had been diverted into the respective banking accounts of the said Kweks Agencies and E. Q. Hammond, the first appellant then got hold of cheque books supposed to belong to Kweks Agencies and E. Q. Hammond and issued cheques therefrom for the collection of the sums of money which they had channelled into the said accounts. By the time the offences were discovered the two appellants, as I have said, had managed to appropriate the said amount of ¢142,321.74."
The first appellant referred to in the above passage is J. E. Ampah, the appellant in this present appeal.
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