Three employees of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) and seven others have been slapped with 20 charges bothering on money laundering and stealing of over GH¢2.1 million worth of prepaid credits.

The employees are Ali Nansii Shaibu a computer programmer at the ICT Department at the Head office, Grace Gardiner, Chief Supervising Cashier of the ECG District office at Kasoa and Anthony D. K. Quaye a technician at the ECG district office in Kasoa.

The other accused persons are Ibrahim Baba Adamu Technician at Ghana Electrometer Company, and Muntari Adamu, Gariba Awudu Misbaw, Kwasi Appiah Donkor, Eric Yaw Kyei and Augustina Laniyan who are all private vendors who sold ECG pre-paid power credit to the public.

ECG, in 2003, entered into a partnership agreement with various companies including Electrometer to provide pre-paid power distribution to customers across the country.

Private dealers were tasked to engage in the sale of the credits as well. Prosecutors say the first accused person (Ali Nansii Shaibu) travelled to Hohoe in 2016 to resolve a pre-paid connectivity challenge for the 7th accused person (Gariba Awudu Misbaw).

The two agreed that the software will be manipulated to enable pre-paid credits to be sent to Gariba without the knowledge of the Hohoe District Office of the ECG.

The 7th accused person will then delete the transaction and share the proceeds among themselves.

Credits worth ¢199,351.60 transferred and sold under this scheme

Mr Shaibu equally entered into this deal with other accused persons resulting in the theft of ¢1,203,249.26 worth of credits.

Another set of transactions with other accused persons resulted in various amounts being stolen.

Prosecutors say investigations put the total value of stolen credits under this scheme at ¢2,143,270.15.

The accused persons are said to have admitted to the offence and refunded an amount of ¢282,600.

They all, however, pleaded not guilty when the charges were read against them in court.

The hearing of the case will resume on April 27, 2023.