Customers of troubled gold dealership company, Menzgold Ghana Limited, have applauded the government for stepping in to get an arrest warrant for the company’s CEO, Nana Appiah Mensah.
Lawyer for the aggrieved customers, Amanda Clinton in a Citi News interview said they are excited that the government now appears interested in ensuring justice for the numerous customers of the company whose investments have been locked up and the CEO is nowhere to be found.
“The system is unbelievably delayed in terms of EOCO’s formal criminal complaint from the 14th of August, but we are very grateful that the government appeared to have moved past the posture of greedy people to bringing people to justice,” she said.
An Accra Circuit Court on Wednesday issued a warrant for the arrest of the embattled company founder, who is popularly known as NAM1.
He has been accused of the offense of defrauding by false pretense contrary to section 131 of Act 29/60.
Two other individuals, Benedicta Appiah and Rose Tetteh, are also to be arrested by the police.
According to private legal practitioner, Gabby Asare Otchere Darko, who’s a known figure in the governing New Patriotic Party, Mr. Appiah Mensah was arrested earlier, but absconded while on bail.
The issue of the warrant comes on the back of a demonstration in the Ashanti Regional capital, Kumasi, by some angry Menzgold customers who burnt vehicle tyres and blocked a major road.
There is currently no details about his whereabouts, but earlier reports said he moved with his family to South Africa in December 2018, and may have moved to Nigeria subsequently.
Menzgold’s challenges
In 2018, over two hundred customers of Menzgold customers besieged the premises of the company’s head office at Dzorwulu to demand payment of their locked up investments.
On December 19, some 100 retired and active Police Officers at the Kasoa Divisional Police Command in the Central Region also filed a writ at the Accra High Court against the company.
Menzgold was asked to suspend its gold trading operations with the public by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
According to the SEC, Menzgold had been dealing in the purchase and deposit of gold collectables from the public and issuing contracts with guaranteed returns with clients, without a valid license from the Commission.
This, the SEC said was in contravention of “section 109 of Act 929 with consequences under section 2016 (I) of the same Act.”
The company was however cleared to continue its “other businesses of assaying, purchasing gold from small-scale miners and export of gold.”
Despite initial protests, Menzgold complied with the directive. It has however failed to fully pay its numerous aggrieved customers the value on their gold deposits as well as their entire investments.
Call for government’s intervention
A lot of Ghanaians had called for government’s intervention in dealing with Menzgold’s founder who has failed to pay back monies to his customers.
The lawyer for some aggrieved customers of Menzgold Ghana Company Limited, Amanda Clinton, says the company will be hit with a lawsuit for breach of contract.
Speaking on Eyewitness News, Mrs. Clinton said her clients will soon be in court to “file applications of breach of contract.”
–
By: Jonas Nyabor|citinewsroom.com
