Court orders arrest of currency printers

The Nsuta Circuit Court in Ashanti, has issued a bench warrant for the arrest of two persons said to belong to a syndicate of fake currency printers operating in the country.

John Karikari, 40 and Collins Dankwa, 45, were picked together with a device and papers for the alleged printing of the currency at Meduma, near Kumasi, on May 15, this year, when they attempted to print some currency to an informant who feigned interest in the deal.

The Mampong Police who effected the arrest charged them with pocessing papers and implement for printing currency notes. They were however granted an enquiry bail of ¢40 million with surety each and were detained in police custody for three days.

They should have appeared before the court on Thursday, but failed to do so prompting the presiding judge, Utter Paul Dery, to grant the request of Chief Inspector Armah, the prosecutor, to issue the bench warrant.

The facts of the case could not be given but the Mampong Divisional Police Commander, Chief Superin-tendent Augustine Gyening, told the Times that when the suspects were arrested, they operated the machine and ¢100,000 in ¢10,000 notes were allegedly printed and that the money would be sent to the Bank of Ghana for verification.

According to him, they had trailed the suspects through the informant for some months until the last encounter at Meduma where they were arrested.

He stressed that the police are also trying to establish whether they had any link with the three persons who were arrested when they attempted positioning ¢220 million in ¢20,000 and ¢10,000 notes at the Kumasi branch of the Bank of Ghana on May 14.

The three, Yakubu Guruma, Prince Gyan and Jibril Tanko have been remanded by a Kumasi Circuit Court in police custody for two weeks.

Source: The Ghanaian Times