Janaury 18, 2022
By: Audrey John
Bockarie Musa made another appearance before Magistrate Sahr Kekura of Pademba road court No.1 in Freetown on seven count charges to wit one count of Conspiracy to defraud contrary to law and six count ranging from Embezzlement contrary to section 17 (1) (b) of the Larceny Act 1916.
According to the particulars of offence on Tuesday 13th July 2021 at logistics solutions and services office No. 48 upper big Waterloo Street the western area in Freetown being a manager embezzled four hundred and three million Leones(403,000,000) received on the account of the management of logistics solutions and services.
First Prosecution witness (PW1) Precious Luseni said her duties as a system administrator when they have issues with the system they called upon the accused person to resolve it and if they have negative feedback from customers they communicate with the accused person and the accused person was the only one liaising with the developer or the system.
The witness recalled on diverse dates between the 13th July and 23rd July 2021, the witness said on the 19th day of July 2021as the Administrative head of logistics solutions and service manager the validation staff made a report to her that a staff is working from home and she enquired and gave permission to the said staff to be working from home and she told the validation manager to give more information in respect of the files the said staff is working in it.
Whilst he (accused person) was on leave the staff, the staff in question was Ivan Johnson upon the information given she checked the CTN platform for her to be able to credit a customer’s account, because there must have been payment from various bank accounts.
After the verification that customer has been paid into an account at various banks she credit those bank accounts and there is a signature to show that the account was credited by her, Precious Luseni on that same day when her colleague alerted her that someone is working from home and having given her further information she checked the system and noticed that an account by the name of Marine Plus has been credited.
PW1 said she saw eight hundred and twenty united States dollars in their account and notified her colleague that the said account is not known to her and it was not credited by her based on her observation she printed the said document and appended her signature to it as an evidence that an account has been credited with out her signature and her knowledge.
According to her, she did it because she was proceeding on leave the following day she don’t whose signature was on the said account in fact it was blank importer user of Marine Plus the account document was produce and tender in court as exhibit A.
She said she advised her colleague about the Marine Plus account to keep calm and observe because more files were coming whilst they were observing the validation manager entered her office and showed her a list of files in her phones sent to her by the accused.
She added that these files were in favour of Marine Plus account the files were sent to the validation manager for him to generate CTN certificates required document that to be present at the part for clearance of containers by exporters or Importers for you to get the certificate you must have paid a fee to them.
The witness said for an example twenty feet containers one hundred and five united States dollars, forty feet containers two hundred twenty united States dollars to the metric Tons and asked for the validation manager screen shot messages that was sent to her by the accused person to use it as evidence which she did and made statement to the police station.
However, defence counsel I.F Sawaneh representing the accused person seek for an adjournment date for him to cross examined the witness. Magistrate Kekura adjourned the matter to the 27th of January 2022.
Detective Superintendent of Police, Isatu Gbassy Fofanah prosecuting the matter.