Slippery Reverend Captain Sam arrested

The Reverend Captain John Abeiku Sam (rtd), Managing Director of Tourism Transport Services, who credited five cars from a Tema car dealing company but vanished into thin air was on Monday brought before a Tema High Court after a warrant has been issued for this arrest.

The Police arrested Rev. Capt. Sam, who had eluded them on several occasions, at about 0400 hours on Monday while he was going to see off a girl friend who had come to spend the night with him at his Adenta residence.

The Tema High Court presided over by Mrs Justice Iris Heward-Mills, who granted him bail with two sureties to be justified, did not give a bail sum but said his properties must satisfy the High Court Registrar.

Hywell Ventures, a private car dealing company, filed a civil suit at the court claiming from Rev. Capt. Sam the cedi equivalent of 22,400 dollars, representing the outstanding balance on the vehicles sold to him in August, 2000.

In its statement of claim, Hywell Ventures said it entered into an agreement with Rev. Capt. Sam under which it sold five vehicles to him at the cost of 149 million cedis to operate his tourism transport company.

The vehicles were a Mitsubishi L300, an Opel Kadet, two Toyota Corollas and a Toyata Hiace bus. By the terms of the sale, Rev. Capt. Sam undertook to pay the full purchase price of the vehicles to Hywell Ventures before October 25, 2000.

The writ, however, said several demands made on Rev. Capt. Sam to make full payment yielded no results except the payment of 15 million cedis.

He then agreed with the company to convert the outstanding balance of 134 million cedis into dollars at the forex bureau dollar-selling rate of 6,000 cedis to one dollar prevailing on the day of the purchase of the vehicles.

Rev. Capt. Sam also promised to liquidate the entire debt on or before December 31, 2000 but failed and further personally undertook to pay the debt owed by his company, Tourism Transport Service by February 12, this year but could not make it again.

The writ said plaintiff's investigations revealed that Rev. Capt. Sam had hired the vehicles out to expatriates in Obuasi and was earning dollars but had refused to pay the full purchase price.

Hywell is demanding the cedi equivalent of the 22,400 US dollars plus interest from the date of the agreement to the day of judgement.

Rev. Capt. Sam, however, said in his defence that this was purely a business transaction carried out without any criminal intent except a delay in payment.

The Rev. Capt. Sam is known to have several court cases including one at the Cocoa Affairs court, Accra, in which he allegedly defrauded Mr Kwabena Adusei Poku, a member of the Adenta Baptist Church of 8.5 million cedis under the pretext of assisting him to obtain an auctioned car from the Customs, Excise and Preventive Service, a Police source told the Ghana News Agency.