Lawyer for CEO of defunct Menzgold Nana Appiah Mensah popularly known as NAM1 has cast doubts on the credibility of the eighth prosecution witness Benjamin Baffoe during his testimony to the Accra High Court.
The Lawyer Kwame Akuffo suggested to him that he has not been a truthful witness to the Court. Mr Akuffo during cross-examination of the witness questioned why he made a statement to the police on September 25 2023 after NAM1 had been put before the High Court on September 19.
The Lawyer also doubted the authenticity of the statement which he said had no register of offence number on it. The witness was also not able to provide the name of the Police Officer who took the statement from him. Mr Baffoe however disagreed with the lawyer.
The witness, currently unemployed, told the court that he was a miner.
He said between December 2017 and June 2018, he invested a total of 840,000 into Menzgold at its Tarkwa Branch.
He said in September 2018, he was informed of the collapse of the gold dealership company and efforts to retrieve his investment have been unsuccessful.
Mr Baffoe said Menzgold initially requested customers to pay five percent of their investment to be migrated online. He said in August 2023 Menzgold directed customers to pay 650 cedis to be able to access their funds but that proved futile.
The witness said the company again asked customers to pay nine percent of their existing investment to enable them to retrieve their money.
He said the demand from Menzgold was to extort money from the customers. Another prosecution witness Rose Ocran said she invested more than 850 thousand cedis into Menzgold and efforts to retrieve her principal have been unsuccessful.
Lawyer Kwame Akuffo objected to the adoption of the witness statements of both witnesses but the court overruled his arguments.
NAM1 is standing trial for allegedly defrauding customers of his defunct company.
He has pleaded not guilty to 39 counts which include selling gold, operating deposit-taking business without license, inducement to invest and defrauding by false pretenses.
