The Managing Director of the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR), Dr. Kofi Kodua Sarpong has estimated that more corporate entities could fall victim to the activities of a fraudulent syndicate that managed to withdraw at least ¢6 billion from the refinery’s account with the Ghana Commercial Bank.

Police are holding three people, including two TOR staff to help in investigations into the fraud.

They are due for court on Wednesday.

Dr. Sarpong who spoke on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show, said judging by the sophistication of the syndicate, TOR was not likely to be the sole victim of the criminal gang.

Luckily for TOR, he said police investigations had led to the discovery of an account of the fraudsters holding about ¢2 billion, leaving the refinery and the police with the hunt for the remaining ¢4 billion.


“I wouldn’t say that we’ve lost six… the account was attacked, six was withdrawn but in the fraudsters account there are some monies there which have already been blocked so maybe …I cant tell the figure off hand, maybe close to two billion so if we net off, then we should be looking at some four billion to search for.”


Dr. Sarpong was full of praise for officials of Stanbic Bank, whose vigilance he said, led to the arrest of the third suspect believed to be a member of the syndicate.

The suspect had attempted withdrawing money from one of several phony accounts operated by the gang.


“Nobody should see this kind of attack as only affecting Tema Oil. From the sophistication that I have learnt from these people’s operations, possibly other corporate entities are affected except that that has not come public, so I think we all need to work hard to smash the syndicate otherwise corporate entities and individuals are going to suffer.”


Dr. Sarpong agreed with John Akorful, Chief Accountant of TOR who had earlier suggested that the fraud could have been detected earlier and probably nipped in the bud if a facility operated by the bank was effective, but he said the bank had been very reliable in previous times.

He told host Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah that henceforth, TOR would require daily account statements from the bank to ensure criminal activities are detected early enough.


But he promised that heads will roll after investigations established culpability against anyone in the refinery.

“The most important thing is that a cheque book disappeared from the cash office; that is why I think our staff are in there to assist the police, but I think it would be wrong to assume at this stage, that they forged those signatures. At least we’ve got one person he should be able to tell us how he came by the money in his account and the cheque he is using and who forged that. They should be able to help us. Obviously there should be a link from Tema Oil because the cheque book couldn’t have walked from the cash office into the fraudster’s hand, somebody obviously took it there.”


Describing the victim account as an active one and the fraud as “bad news”, he said it was definite disciplinary measures would be put in place to prevent a recurrence.