Sakawa Victim Sues Stanchart

Posted: Daily Guide |www.dailyguideghana.com
Monday, 13 September 2010
By Charles Takyi-Boadu
Marian Little, the retired British businesswoman who fell prey to internet fraud popularly known as ‘sakawa, through her supposed lover, is putting up a strong legal team to sue one of the leading banks in the country, Standard Chartered Bank (Stanchart), for their alleged involvement in the scam that led to her losing her life-long savings of $100,000.

In an almost two hour-long interview with DAILY GUIDE last Thursday, Marian narrated what could easily pass for a Hollywood movie since the scam was so sophisticated to an extent that even the fraud department of the famous Lois Bank in the United Kingdom, which conducted extensive initial investigations into it before she transferred the $100,000 to her supposed lover’s account in Ghana, could not detect anything.

Marian claims to have sighted the account dossier of her victim, the 25-year-old boy, who used the name of Frederick Stark to dupe her in what was supposed to be a love affair, and realized that the bank broke all protocols in the banking since it failed to do due diligence in the discharge of its duties.

So far, five people including the 25-year-old principal suspect who used the name Frederick Stark, his supposed 22-year-old daughter, Agnes Anang and a staff of the Tudu branch of Standard Chartered Bank have been arrested and are facing trial in at a High Court.

According to her, the money hit the account on Monday, September 14, 2009, two working days after it was transferred from the UK and was surprised why the management of the bank allowed an amount of GH¢50,000 to be cashed from an account which had known very little or no transaction the very morning the money hit it.

Later the same day, she narrated, the supposed Fredrick Starke went to cash another GH¢40,000 and came back on Wednesday to remove another GH¢20,000 and a further GH¢31,000.

On the Thursday, she stated, he withdrew GH¢51,000, saying “and nobody checked with me where the money had come from, whether the reasons he gave that he got it were true. I had no knowledge at all that money had arrived and was being taken out of that account.”

“There is an undercurrent here, I have to say the youth because I’m not sure, they don’t use their names but most of it, coming back to it, feels like it’s payback time for the whites.

They’ve come; they’ve stolen our gold and its time for us to fight back,” she noted, emphasizing that gradually, Sakawa is becoming an institution in Ghana because it is controlled by some high-profile personalities, some of who are not in the country but supervise the activities and operations of these syndicates.

From the narration that she gave, the account that was used to dupe her was opened for just that purpose since it was not a running account.

Marian said the fact that the owner of the account, who happens to be her supposed lover, claimed to be a sole trader when he was going to open the account and considering the fact that no serious transactions had occurred in it for the whole 18months that it was opened as well as the spate of withdrawals, should have prompted the bank and its management to investigate it when the money hit the account.

She could therefore not fathom why a highly-rated bank such as Stanchart would allow itself to be used for such a scam in which they presented the said account as a dollar account when indeed it was a cedi savings account.

Marian was therefore not the least surprised that a staff of the bank had been named and currently standing trial in connection with the case.

The retired businesswoman is bent on not just getting justice but also exposing the schemes that these fraudsters use on their unsuspecting victims in order to help reduce the spate of internet fraud in Ghana.

Though down, she stated that it is not the end of the road for her since she is more than willing to help the police and other security agencies in Ghana with her little experience to clamp down on the activities and operations of these scammers.

Meanwhile, Attorney General and Minister of Justice Betty Mould-Iddrisu has indicated her interest in seeing to the case having logical conclusion, since it is tarnishing the image of Ghana internationally; hence transferring the case from a circuit to a High Court.

Marian was hoping to enjoy the full benefits of her retirement with her ‘internet lover’ but she ended up being duped when she transferred part of her life-long savings to Frederick Stark who claimed to be a retiring American Colonel.

She however has a glimmer of hope in the country’s judiciary and the security agencies, with the conviction that at the end of the day, she can get justice or better still get her money back since the Serious Fraud Office, the Attorney General’s office, the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service and the British High Commission in Ghana all have an interest in the case.

‘Rawlings Is Doomed’

Posted: Daily Guide |www.dailyguideghana.com
Thursday, 09 September 2010
By Charles Takyi-Boadu
The struggle for power in the National Democratic Congress (NDC) was taken to another level yesterday when Mills’ bloc claimed victory over the founder, Jerry Rawlings and his faction.

This was when a member of the Mills’ camp, Alhaji Iddrisu Bature, made claims on Adom FM’s morning show that the Mills camp had succeeded in taming or confining Rawlings to the cooler.

Bature was responding to claims by a youth activist of the party and General Secretary for the Youth for Leadership (YFL), a pro-Rawlings group, Sacut Amenga-Etego that President Mills ‘lacks wise counsel’ in his administration.

Sacut stated in his latest articles to the press that he was sure the biggest problem of President Mills was that of the lack of wise counselors, noting with emphasis “I’m even surer that he needs an inclination for that kind of desired wise counsel- an inclination the president has woefully failed to demonstrate since he became President.”

He proceeded to ask a rhetorical question: “why, how can any leader ever lead successfully without the benefit of such counsel?” stressing “perhaps, only in an Atta Mills Presidency can people delude themselves with such a notion.”

Among other things, the youth activist claimed that the President was not living up to the virtues of the June 4 revolution on which the NDC, as a party, was founded.

These claims by Sacut triggered Alhaji Bature to shoot out of his shell, strongly defending President Mills.

In the heat of the argument on the radio, Alhaji Bature said people like Sacut meant nothing to the Mills camp since they had ‘finished’ the founder of the party, adding “don’t you see we have finished Rawlings. Why can’t we hear from him again?”

Bature wondered what Sacut and his other colleagues who made claims of owing unflinching allegiance to Jerry Rawlings could do since they are now ‘small flies’.

For him, the only thing that these Rawlings followers could do, would be to destroy the chances of the party in 2012 and not that of Mills as a person since according to him, the President was God-given and the best thing to have happened to Ghana as a country.

“What is the difference between you that you cannot use official channels to resolve, you need to go to the media often to expose and embarrass the President,” he asked.

Instead, Bature said Professor Mills was prepared to resign as President and nothing would happen to him, predicting that “it is the NDC that will suffer.”

However, spokesman for the former President, Kofi Adams said nobody could confine Rawlings to silence and that he would speak when he had to.

“Who is in the position to do so? When he has to talk, he will talk.”

Mr. Adams laughed away suggestions that Alhaji Bature is a leading member of the NDC since according to him “we don’t have anything like a leading member.

We have executives; I don’t know him as a leading member. Who does he lead in the NDC?”

That notwithstanding, he said the founder of the party would not allow any individual or group of persons to influence his thoughts and that he would speak when the need arose.

IGP Must Go

Posted: daily Guide |www.dailyguideghana.com
Wednesday, 08 September 2010
By Charles Takyi-Boadu
The Alliance for Accountable Governance (AFAG) has added its voice to calls for the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Paul Tawiah Quaye, to do the honourable thing by resigning his position to save the “sinking” image of the Service.

AFAG says it is convinced that the IGP’s continuous stay in office would bring civil actions and lawlessness when Ghana goes to the polls to elect a president in 2012, thereby undermining the country’s long cherished peace and political stability.

This, they said, was evident in recent events including the brutalities visited on innocent residents of Abomosu in the just-ended Atiwa bye-election, in the full glare of the police, which have led to a mistrust of the Service.

Speaking at a press conference in Accra, spokesman for the group, Samuel Adjei-Mensah Korsah said “our worries are reinforced by the inability of state institutions as the Ghana Police Service and the security agencies to defend our constitution and protect the liberties and human rights of all Ghanaians.”

AFAG noted that it is becoming clear that the police are failing to operate in a balanced manner in the moderation of political activities in the country.

They could not fathom why the police arrested and invited Nana Adarkwa of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) and Joy FM’s Ato Kwamena Dadzie for purportedly ‘causing fear panic’ and yet allowed the chairman of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), Dr Kwabena Adjei to go scot free when he indicated their (NDC) intentions to ‘clean’ the country’s judiciary and even proceeded to dare any individual or group of persons to raise and issue with it and vowed to take them on.

“The police’s conduct is starting to breed deep mistrust and insecurity amongst large sections of our people, such that many of them are beginning to think of taking up citizens’ actions to protect themselves, their freedoms and their political interests,” AFAG stressed.

The pressure group believes the NDC chairman’s vitriolic attack on the Judiciary, which set off “an organised chorus of threats and ugly noises by NDC functionaries and assorted bedfellows to purge and clean up Ghana’s Judiciary in general, and remove the Chief Justice in particular”, poses the gravest challenge to the sacred principles of the separation of powers under the country’s constitution.

For them, these unguarded utterances, which they said included direct and unsubtle threats to let loose the ruling party’s ‘foot-soldiers’ on members of the Judiciary, if Government failed to interfere, have created a state of panic, insecurity and fear of intimidation amongst many members of the Judiciary.

However, AFAG said it was not the least surprised at these unhealthy developments, considering the historical antecedents of the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) government which metamorphosed into the modern-day NDC, with specific reference to the cold events that led to the abduction and subsequent murder of three High Court Judges in 1982.

For this reason, the group said, “It is not surprising therefore that a senior Judge of the High Court publicly expressed fear for his safety when he recused himself from the Ya Na murder case and went on to challenge the Attorney-General’s office to substantiate its attempt to bully and blackmail him.”

Ordinarily, the leadership of AFAG said, it would have been comforted by the president’s reassurance that the Executive will not interfere in the Judiciary, but cannot help but point out that “his Excellency’s statement was negated and totally undermined immediately by that of the regional chairmen of the NDC, which threatened to unleash the wrath of their unrepentant foot-soldiers to chase out those judges that the party believed were unfit for their jobs.”

The group stated that it was worried that this ‘organised network of advocates’ has shown great disregard for the President’s position because it poses a real and present danger to the country’s Judiciary in particular and all law-abiding citizens in general, stressing that “the President’s position only absolves the Executive and not the party, of which he is the leader.”

AFAG said “the NDC party and its men have an agenda to prosecute and the President as the leader of their party has not succeeded in sufficiently re-assuring Ghanaians of a non NDC party aggression and future attacks in any form on the Judiciary.”
It called on all Ghanaians, both home and abroad, to join in a massive civil action in the coming weeks, to demonstrate the full and unflinching support of the good people of Ghana for judicial independence, the rule of law, civil liberty and continuing peace in the country.