There was confusion at the Sunyani branch of the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) last Wednesday morning following the temporary closure of the bank by an aggrieved former manager of the bank and his lawyers.

Barimah-Agyekum Hinneh, the lawyer for the former adb bank’s branch manager for Sunyani, Emmanuel Abukyi, stormed the bank’s premises and took away computers being used at the bank for failure to adhere to a ruling by the Sunyani High Court but after pleadings by the legal office of the bank, the seized items were released for work to resume after about an hour, prompting some customers to murmur over the issue.

Meanwhile, Daasebre Akuamoah Agyapong II, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of adb and nine others, who are all Board Members will, on Wednesday 30th November 2022, appear before the Sunyani High Court for failing to execute the court’s orders to pay Mr. Emmanuel Abukyi, a former branch manager of the bank all his salaries and entitlements covering a period of five years prior to his retirement.

Even though the Sunyani High Court presided over Justice Patrick Baayeh had ruled on the matter on 21st February, 2020 that adb erred in dismissing Mr. Abukyi and should therefore compensate him per the court’s judgement within 30 days after the ruling, the bank had failed to comply.

Mr. Abukyi was wrongly dismissed by the bank on 11th April, 2014 for allegedly failing to transfer an amount of Gh.c 246.500.00 from the Sunyani branch of the adb bank to the Bank of Ghana.

Software failure

But subsequent checks after his dismissal proved that the said amount was rather locked up in the bank’s system as a result of the software being used at the time for the transfer and that Mr. Abukyi had not stolen the money as it was being alleged.

The affidavit of Emmanuel Abukyi in support of his latest contempt case filed against adb bank partly reads “that per the judgement under reference, adb bank (Defendant/Judgement/Debtor) was ordered to compute all salaries, allowance, benefits, etc that the plaintiff was entitled to from 18/02/2014 to 17/02/2019 and file same at the Registry of the Court with 30 days from the day of judgement (i.e. at most, by the end of March 2020).”

“That in spite of the Entry of Judgement duly served on the respondents, the deliberately and willfully refused/ignored to compute and file at the Registry, the entitlements due me as ordered by the Honourable Court….”, the affidavit again stated.