A 36-year-old loans officer of Tamale-based loans company, ACD Ghana, Hawa Maiga Ibrahim is wanted by Police in the Northern Region for allegedly duping her employer’s GH¢1.4 million.
Ibrahim is accused of diverting several months of loan funds into her personal account and absconding with it.
Chief Executive Officer of the company, Mutala Muktar told GhanaWeb that the suspect initially showed commitment, winning the company’s trust before allegedly duping them.
He said the company became suspicious of her in early January this year and when they started identifying discrepancies in their books but she absconded before they could arrest her.
“She showed commitment when we employed her, so we trusted her. We could dedicate over GH¢100,000 to her alone daily to disburse amongst women’s groups. Initially, she was hardworking until this January when we realized her books were not adding up. By 16th January, she was nowhere to be found,” Muktar explained.
He added that the company did not immediately detect her ‘criminal act’ because she had direct contact with their clients and was also falsely entering her records.
“Because she was hardworking, I trusted her, we made her a loans officer who had direct access to the groups and could even bring on board new clients. So, she would take the money from us in the name of the groups but would not give it to them. We recently realized she deliberately developed a barrier between the company and the groups such that they couldn’t directly contact us.
“…So for several months, she was taking loans for the groups from us and yet they never received them. Normally because these loan officers are those who know the clients, we couldn’t immediately detect it until we no longer understood her dealings,” he added.
Muktar said their initial investigation shows she is currently hiding at an unknown location in the Eastern Region.
Police sources confirmed the story, saying that the matter was under investigation by the Criminal Investigations Department.
“We’re working on her docket and if we don’t get her or she doesn’t turn herself in, we will officially declare her wanted,” a police source said.
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