Life is a Journey: Live it (Part 33)

The other autobiography
I had done one or two businesses with him in the used shoes business. At one stage, he was watching a customer from Uganda who pretended to have bought only one container of used shoes, for which the supplier paid us only once a commission, while in fact the buyer stayed in a hotel or slept in the warehouse to buy almost ten containers. Supplier and buyer alike wanted to cheat us and save the commission fee. Maik Pöhlmann was very, very honest and helpful in this spying exercise. At one stage, he had problems paying us for the brokerage we had helped him with. Little by little, he pays us in the end. I had left Germany, never thinking of him again.

At that time, from Accra, I sent out articles about Ghana and other issues in the form of emails, with no clue about Facebook and social media or even modernghana.com. I am not at all a computer expert, far from it. Maik Pöhlmann got these emails and was very upset about it. I did not know what to do to stop him from being on the list of receivers, as I had sent them out to hundreds of email accounts that, over the years, happened to be in my email accounts. In such a case, I mark emails as SPAM, and over time, they disappear from my SPAM folder. That is all I know about it. Sending out articles to accounts in my account without specific lists, mainly to bring us back into the memory of our customers, the anger Mail Pöhlmann felt about these emails grew steadily. He threatened to ask a lawyer to deal with me. I deeply apologised for my inability to stop emails from reaching his inbox and asked him to mark them as SPAM, as the unpleasant situation should be solved fast. He refused to accept my apology and threatened me further to take appropriate action to stop and deal with me. I was ready for anything, waiting for his next move.

The time came, and he wrote an email to me jubilating. He said he has stolen from my three email accounts, two private ones for the business, and all my email numbers. I was surprised and puzzled how he could have achieved that to sneak into my emails and steal them. While he was happy to have punished me and done great harm in revenge, I forwarded all emails to the police in Leipzig by contacting their online presence and police station to file complaints. A police officer contacted me via email and mentioned they would look into the matter and see about this man who signed in the emails with the name of Maik Pöhlmann. First, they were not convinced a person by that name would exist, and everything would be one of these strange internet stories. Maik Pöhlmann had used the official email account of the company GRA GmbH in Spreewald near Berlin, not his private email account, to attack me.

The old owner of GRA GmbH was a very nice person, and we sat together in his warehouse three or four times while one of my clients from Africa would check out the quality of the goods and sorting. The daughter of the owner was interested in horses, not in used clothes. After ending her professional training to become a horse caretaker, it was time for him to retire. His health was no longer good. That was the last information I had about GRA GmbH. Much to my surprise, Maik Pöhlmann became the Managing Director of this small firm. An Italian investor with business in Italy in the same sector hired him to run their German operation. Wow, what a surprise to me. This world is a small place, and when you walk in the same circle, life goes round and round. I had never mentioned GRD GmbH to Maik Pöhlmann, let alone taken him there.

A few weeks after filing my complaint to the Leipzig police, I saw on the GRW website that Maik Pöhlmann was no longer seen as its Managing Director. Maybe, just my guess, the police had sent to the company, and as the email attack all started from the company email account, I could have possibly sued the company and the Italian investor, as after all, all my emails got stolen from and through that company account. A hot potato for them, having had no business in the heated argument. I still wonder about his reaction and the reason to fight me, and more so, that he was not wise enough to use his personal email account instead of the account of the company he had worked for. Some mysteries will always be there in the world.

Emma Heerde, in 2013, closed down our company, Black & White International Business Limited, even though I held 30% of the shares. She claimed the accountant had advised her to do so, and so the company we had bought our company from, specialised in Germany to set up Limiteds. Instead of using the company to make money for herself and her baby boy or to ask her new boyfriend for help and financial support, she decided to close down the company. This mystery I will elaborate on later. What still puzzles me is how legally she was able to close down the company, as I was not invited to a board meeting to discuss the closure. In Ghana, busy surviving I had no power to change the course of events in Germany. Two years later, I established the company Black & White International Limited with my partner Sey Adjey.“

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