FRANK KOJO ESHUN v. THE REPUBLIC

Baffour J.A:

INTRODUCTION

This appeal before us only assails the sentence of twenty (20) years imprisonment imposed on the Appellant by the trial Judge but not the conviction under any of the counts. The factual and evidenciary basis upon which the Appellant was convicted is a testament to how a beautiful brain can be warped and prostituted for ignoble causes. Appellant on the verge of being invited to open his defence after prosecution had called ten witnesses and closed its case, changed his plea from not guilty to guilty and was accordingly convicted and sentenced to a maximum of twenty years imprisonment with hard labour.

CHARGES

The Appellant was charged and tried together with five others at the High Court, Financial Division, Accra, for offences relating to dishonesty. Appellant faced twenty-one out of the forty-two counts. It may not be necessary for the purposes of this appeal to go through all the twenty-one counts that Appellant faced one after the other. Suffice it to state that the charges related to conspiracy to commit stealing, stealing, forgery, uttering false documents all contrary to sections 23(1), 124(1), 158, 166 and 169, all of the Criminal and Other Offences Act, 1960, Act 29. The total amount that was found to have been stolen or lost through the criminal actions of the Appellant was said to be One Million, Three Hundred and Eighty-Six Thousand & Seven Hundred Ghana Cedis.

FACTS

The facts upon which he was tried and convicted may be summarized as follows: The Appellant sometime in October, 2011 appeared at the offices of Bulk Oil and Transportation Company (BOST) with a posting letter purporting to have emanated from the National Service Secretariat, posting the Appellant to its Finance Department. Unknown to BOST the letter had been forged by the Appellant bearing a false name Ghartey Ato Kwamina. Within weeks he was detailed to lodge cheques of the company into its accounts. Having witnessed the high value of the cheques deposited he conspired with others, some of whom have been convicted and are prisoners, and others at large to open two accounts with forged documents in the name of BOST at the Achimota branch of Zenith Bank. Subsequent cheques handed over to the Appellant to deposit in BOST designated bank accounts were then diverted by him and paid into the phony accounts that had been opened. Within weeks of the opening of the accounts, huge sums of monies running into millions of Ghana cedis had been deposited and quic