Why Claw Back NAM1 Personal Assets- Gained From Investors Deposits?

Lawyer Amanda Akuokor Clinton has been advocating steadily on GhanaWeb that this government should work with international counterparts in order to claw back NAM1’s assets he has moved/ purchased abroad (money, property, cars, jewelry, investments etc.) because in the West (where most sophisticated ponzi schemes are undertaken); governments know you that you must ensure the perpetrator has no financial benefit after the crime even though he swindled millions of people. It is to leave the con artist worse off financially than when he started the con and to ensure that the ‘victims’ are not the only ones whose standard of living changes dramatically after the con.

When large scale ponzi schemes are discovered by authorities in the West, the investors are identified as victims because a con artist tricked them into parting with money by offering legally binding commercial agreements that stated what an investor could receive from the investment.

Bernard Murdock’s ponzi scheme in the United Sates is a good example because when investors were not paid back their investments by the government from Murdock’s business funds, the government clawed back as much as they could including Murdock’s wife’s jewellery since that was bought with investors monies.

Tens of thousands of people will be penniless this Christmas having invested their life savings in Menzgold. They reaped no rewards as guaranteed by their commercial legally binding investment agreements.

This effort of clawing NAM’s money is not chasing a mirage but making sure that monies that were moved offshore to ensure NAM1 would be able to live off the money for the rest of his life and have a private jet to spare is traced; properties liquidated with the help of international counterparts; jets liquidated; cars liquidated and all monies put in a fund to be enjoyed by investors since this is their principle money invested.

Government warned the masses

This is therefore not a matter of whether government warned the masses because arguably

1. Warning by government is to shut down operations as early as you see that the business model is a sham designed just to take in depositors money

2. Warning by government is to shut down Menzgold in February 2017 when the Chairman of the Finance Committee of parliament said that they told Menzgold directly that they were operating an illegal business

3. Warning by government is to even shut down Menzgold in their first month of operations since it is a red flag they had tried and failed to open two banks before Menzgold and were shut down immediately therefore Menzgold should have been more closely scrutinised

4. Warning by government is not to legitimize NAM1 by so recently taking pictures with him and the President of Ghana

Why should NAM1 end up rich from the scam?

Ghana may not have the technical capabilities within FIC, EOCO CID etc. particularly as it seems government officials have been compromised if CID won’t even formally open a file against NAM1-three months later. They can however rely on countries who have experienced ponzi schemes on a large scale to help cull the monies to go immediately in a fund to be distributed by government and government won’t need to spend a penny.

Why government should care about how they are coming across to the public

Optics is how a situation looks. If a government comes across unsympathetic, unresponsive, non committal, cruel in only commenting about ‘greedy investors’ at the most senior echelons of government; whether they are right to or not is besides the point. It’s about whether the ‘silly’ investor thought leadership showed leadership to them the 1.8 million plus and not 1 million investors as has been misquoted.

Government begged the people to get into power, pandering to the idea that they would serve the people-yet not a peep from a leader who spent 20 years talking about how he would fight for the common man. The common man is often illiterate, ill advised etc. so it is this group that needs direction and guidance even after a fall they helped to create.

Who better to serve than the people who could have advised themselves better whilst leaving the real work to international counterparts and not putting a penny of government’s money to the effort. It shows leadership, ingenuity, care, utilising external resources and the mark of the party to win Ghana’s 2020 elections.

Compassion means caring about the ignorant and ill advised. Without that, such people may not believe they can have compassion to the candidate they finally gave a chance to.

Akweley Morrison

MSC. African Politics (SOAS)