‘Menzgold Extorted Customers’

Another witness in the trial of Nana Appiah Mensah aka NAM1, the Chief Executive Officer of Menzgold Ghana Limited, yesterday indicated that all attempts to retrieve funds locked with the defunct company proved futile and the company used that as an advantage to extort money from customers.

The prosecution called two witnesses yesterday, bringing the total number of witness to eight, leaving the case investigator as the prosecution’s last witness who would be called to testify on February 7, 2024.

The eighth witness, Benjamin Baffoe, in his evidence-in-chief stated that he made a total of GH¢840,000.00 in Menzgold between December 2017 and June 2018.

NAM1 and two of his companies – Menzgold Ghana Limited and Brew Marketing Consult Ghana Limited are facing 39 counts of defrauding by false pretence, inducing members of the public to invest and money laundering.

He said he was informed later in September 2019 that Menzgold and Brew Consult had collapsed and he made several attempts through the association, Coalition of Aggrieved Customers, to retrieve his money but it proved futile.

He recalled that “in 2018, Menzgold asked us to pay a migration fee of 5% of our existing investment to enable them to migrate our investment online but that also proved futile.”

Mr. Baffoe also indicated that in August 2023 customers of Menzgold were asked to pay GH¢650 to retrieve their funds but that also failed.

Menzgold again asked customers to pay 9% of their existing investments to retrieve their money but just like the other payments, this also failed to produce any result.

Putting all these together, the witness said “all demands on Menzgold did not yield any result, rather, money was extorted from customers.”

I Was Disoriented

Another witness in the trial, Mrs. Rose Ocran, the prosecution’s seventh witness, recounted the devastating effect of losing her monies to the company had on her.

She said she behaved like a mad person at the onset when she realized she had been defrauded by the accused persons because she was disoriented.

Recounting her ordeal, she detailed one instance when she forgot one of her slippers downstairs and it had to be brought to her upstairs.

The witness, like the five before her, were among thousands of people who invested millions of Cedis in Menzgold but could not recover dividends nor their principals as a result of  NAM1’s companies collapsing for operating without a licence.

In her case, she invested a total of GH¢851,600.00 in Menzgold and Brew Consult between February and July 2018.

She indicated in her witness statement that, “I have not received any extra value on the renewed contract made on 20^th July, 2018.”

She adds that, “all efforts to retrieve my principal from Menzgold Ghana Ltd. have been unsuccessful.”

The witness before them had told the court last week that he realised that the businessman and his companies were deceitful in their dealings with customers of the company.

Fred Odame Asiedu, a businessman who invested GH¢1.2 million in the defunct companies but could not retrieve his money, was the prosecution’s sixth witness.

 

Source:dailyguidenetwork.com