Sola Adio Olusesi V. The State (1970)

LawGlobal-Hub Lead Judgment Report

FATAI-WILLIAMS, J.S.C.

In Charge No. LN5C/69 in the High Court of Lagos the two accused persons stood trial upon an information containing thirteen counts-twelve of fraudulent false accounting and one of stealing.

The first accused (Sola Adio Olusesi) was charged alone in six of the counts with fraudulent false accounting, the particulars of each of which stated that being a clerk employed by the John Holt Shipping Services Ltd., Apapa, he omitted from the cash-book of the said company, on a specified date and with intent to defraud, a particular sum of money received on that specified date from the Barclays Bank at Apapa.

The second accused (Clarence Igoinfa) alone was also charged in six of the remaining seven counts with fraudulent false accounting. The particulars of each of these stated that being a clerk employed by the same John Holt Shipping Services Ltd., Apapa, with intent to defraud, he was privy to each of the omissions, specified in the first six counts, made by the first accused from the cash-book of the said company.
In the thirteenth count, they were jointly charged with stealing. The particulars of this last count stated that the two accused persons between 1st December, 1966, and 20th October, 1967, at Apapa, being the clerks employed by the said John Holt Shipping Services Ltd., Apapa, stole the sum of 3,222pounds:0s 6d (Le. the total of all the sums omitted from the cashbook), property of the said company.

After their arrest in connection with the offences shown in the charge, the 1st accused made the statement (exhibit 70) to the police in which he said, inter alia, as follows:-
“Mr Igoinfa my immediate boss used all the money mentioned by himself to redeem his LO.V. We checked my cashbooks daily and signed my cash-books as being correct because he was the one who instructed me not to make correct entries into the cash-books and as he was the one making use of the said amounts. I knew at the time he was making use of these amounts that he was making use of the company’s money and not his own personal money.

Any time I query him about these money, he use to tell that I should not worry and that he was going to write them off. I did not use any of the aforesaid amounts for my benefit. It was Mr Igoinfa who made use of all the money. He is the accountant and the manager and he has all the powers to do whatever he likes in the company and I was not in a position to query his authority.”
In his own statement (exhibit 72) regarding the cheques covering the said amounts, the 2nd accused stated as follows:-
“I do not know anything about them. I did not at any time ask Mr Olusesi our cashier not to enter them into the cash-books. Though I do check the cash-books and sign the cash-books as being correct but I did not see any where these cheques were posted in the cash-books.”

In order to get a panoramic picture of the sequence of events, it will be necessary to set out in more detail than usual the evidence led at the trial. Those documents, and many were indiscriminately tendered at the trial, which appear to us irrelevant for the purpose of this appeal, will, however, be disregarded.

Testifying for the prosecution, Peter Edwin Cheer (4th P. W.) the adminis-trative manager of the John Holt Shipping Services Ltd., Apapa, (hereinafter referred to as the company) stated that at the material time, the 1st accused was the company’s cashier and that his duties as cashier were to look after the cash and to write up the cash-books of the company.

These cash-books are exhibits 1 to 4. The 1st accused as cashier was directly responsible to the 2nd accused, another employee of the company, whose duty, among others, was to check the four cash-books everyday and to sign the relevant entries if he was satisfied that they had been properly made and that they were arithmetically correct. It was also his duty to check, once a month, and the bank reconciliation statements which showed the differences between the balance in the cash-book and the balance in the bank statements.

The bankers of the company are the Barclays Bank, Apapa. The normal way to discover any omission from the cash-book was when the reconciliation statement was checked at the end of each month.

In order to withdraw any money from the bank, continued the witness, a cash voucher was prepared for the sum required. The voucher was usually prepared by the 1st accused and was then taken to any member of the managerial staff (of which 2nd accused was one) for signature. After it had been signed the 1st accused would make out a cheque for the authorised sum. The cheque was then taken to one of the company’s officials authorised to sign such cheques for signature. After it had been signed the 1st accused would cash the cheque at the bank. On his return to the office, he would put the money in his cash-box and later the same day record the transaction in his cash-book.
The 4th P.W. then proceeded to show that eleven cheques (exhibit 8 to 18) issued by the company between 1st December, 1966 and 20th October, 1967, were all made out for cash and were all cashed by the first accused as cashier. Among these eleven cheques, all drawn on the Barclays Bank, Apapa, were the six which formed the basis of the charges of fraudulent false accounting brought against the two accused persons. The particulars of the six cheques are as follows:-
(a) Cheque for 300pounds 0s 0d cashed on 1-12-66 (exhibit 8)
(b) Cheque for 565pounds 1s 4d cashed on 3-1-67 (exhibit 10)
(c) Cheque for 300pounds 0s 0d cashed on 2-5-67 (exhibit 12)
(d) Cheque for 200pounds 0s 0d cashed on 4-8-67 (exhibit 14)
(e) Cheque for 213pounds 5s 1d cashed on 17-10-67 (exhibit 16) (f) Cheque for 300 0s 0d cashed on 20-10-67 (exhibit 18)

The total amount received by the first accused on these eleven cheques was 3,222pounds 0s 6d. None of the amounts shown on each of the cheques was entered, as it should have been done, in any of the relevant cash-books (exhibit 1 to 4). The effect of the omission was that the first accused who had to account for the sum of 3,222 0s 6d made it appear that it need not be accounted for. Although the amount was drawn by the cashier there was no trace of what he did with it.

Dealing with the reconciliation statements which, if correctly checked by the 2nd accused, would have disclosed the omission, the 4th P.W. testified further as follows:-
“The documents to be used for the reconciliation for each month are the cash-book, bank statements with supplementary list, the bank’s deposit book or tellers.”
Explaining how the reconciliation statements were prepared every month, the 4th P.W. pointed out that the normal procedure was for someone else to prepare the statements while the second accused would check the statements and satisfy himself that they were correct.

Another witness called by the prosecution was Sarumi (7th P.W.) who stated that payments made to the company by cheques but not yet paid into the bank should have been shown in detail “cheque by cheque” in the reconciliation statements on exhibits 14 instead of being lumped together as “forward payments”. He also pointed out that if details of these “forward payments” had been given in the statements, one would have seen if the correct amount shown on each cheque had been entered and thereby discovered any fraud or defalcation. As the entries against the “forward payments” in the reconciliation statement at page 111 of the cashbook (exhibit 1) stood, the amount of 6,891 19s 3d, for example, could include genuine as well as fictitious sums.