A Circuit Court at Anyinam in the Eastern Region has sentenced two workers of Oil Marketing Company, Ready Oil, to a total of 15 years imprisonment for stealing to the tune of c102,000.00.
Emmanuel Ohene Amankwah, 27, and Douglas Twumasi, 25, will serve eight and seven-year jail terms respectively.
They pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit crime, to wit; stealing and stealing.
The prosecutor, Chief Inspector Joseph Damfei told the court the first convict is the Kwabeng branch manager of Ready Oil whilst the second is a fuel pump attendant.
The complainant in the case is Samuel Kwaku Owusu-Manu, CEO of Ready Oil Limited.
According to him, on May 20 this year, at about 10:20 pm when the complainant had returned to Kwabeng from Accra, he spotted someone siphoning fuel into a tipper truck at his station at Kwabeng.
Chief Inspector Damfei said the complainant met the first convict but the driver of the tipper truck bolted upon seeing him.
The police chief said when the complainant confronted him, he told him all the workers were aware of what was going on at the fuel station.
Chief Damfei explained that on May, 21, the complainant went back to the station to check on the previous day’s sales and it was c48,000 but the convicts could only account for c 17,617. 00.
Mr Owusu-Manu, the police said when he confronted the second convict, claimed to have sold the fuel to one Awudu and accounted to the first convict, the manager.
The police prosecutor stated that the complainant again detected Petrol and Diesel shortage in the underground tank worth c19,109, 50p.
An audit inquiry revealed that the convicts could also not account for fuel sold on credit to one Tommy, Richard and Ghandi at c31,000, c20,000 and c2,800 respectively.
Tommy and Richard denied ever buying fuel on credit from the station.
Ghandi, however, confirmed buying on credit at c1,400 and not c2,800.
In his ruling, Franklin Titus Glover, the Anyinam Circuit Court judge, directed that an unregistered Toyota Camry the manager had bought should be sold to offset part of the cost.
The CEO of Ready Oil Limited, Samuel Kwaku Owusu-Manu, after the court proceedings lamented how most Ghanaian businesses are struggling due to some workers who have been stealing from them.
According to him, the development has either discouraged a lot more people from investing locally or collapsed existing businesses.