SEWASS Accounts Clerk On The Run

SEBASTIAN ESSIEN, an accounts clerk of Sefwi Wiawso Secondary School (SEWASS) in the Western Region, who allegedly duped 26 students in the sum of ¢20 million (GH¢2000) is on the run.

Six students (names withheld) who allegedly connived with the accounts clerk have been sent home by the school authorities to pay back the fees to the affected students.

They have, however, been granted police enquiry bail.
Making the disclosure in a telephone interview with DAILY GUIDE yesterday, Mr. Kingsford Someah-Addae, Headmaster of the school said the accounts clerk allegedly connived with six final year students to execute the deal.

He said the six students confessed that they went round collecting the school fees and final year examination registration fees from 26 colleague students with the intention of paying the money at SG-SSB or Ghana Commercial Bank in Sefwi Wiawso.

Instead of paying to the bank, the six students rather hatched a plan with the school's accounts clerk whom they paid the cash to.
Sebastian Essien, who is in his thirties, then gave the students some undisclosed commission and issued them with fake SG-SSB Bank pay-in-slips bearing the bank's rubber stamp.

The six students then distributed the fake bank pay-in-slips to the victims, indicating that their monies had been duly lodged with the bank.

Mr. Somiah-Addae said on Thursday, 11th October 2007, he had a telephone call from the accountant of SG-SSB Bank in Sefwi Wiawso that he had detected some fake pay-in-slips regarding some students who had paid monies to the bank.

This came to light when some students of SEWASS, who had given monies to the six students to pay on their behalf, called at the bank's premises to verify the authenticity of the slips.

It was there that the accountant at SG-SSB Bank detected that the pay-in-slips did not contain the bank's embossment and quickly rang the headmaster to inform him.

The school authorities then rounded up the six students involved and consequently handed them over to the police for further interrogation, where they confessed the deal.

When the police went to arrest the accounts clerk at his residence, he had already vanished into thin air.

From Sam Mark Essien, Takoradi