…after sharing US $49,000 ransom

Intelligence available to the Daily Post reveals strenuous attempts by the INTERPOL –Ghana police bosses to cover-up their shocking sharing of US $ 49,000 ransom that was paid into the account of a Nigerian kidnapper by his victim’s father.

An amount of US$100,000 was paid into the Ecobank account of Emmanuel Emeka Nwangu ‘M’ and his Ghanaian girl friend, Patricia by the father of a three year old child they kidnapped in Nigeria and brought to Ghana. The two withdrew part of the money from that account and deposited it into a Barclays Bank account.

The money, according to intelligence gathered by this paper was withdrawn by the INTERPOL –Ghana bosses and shared. Further investigations by this paper indicate that the police bosses, after obtaining a court authorization, withdrew the money from the Barclays and Ecobank accounts and deposited them into the Commissioner Police CID account with the Bank of Ghana. Orders were thereafter given to two workers of the Pay Office of the Police Service to go and cash the money; the order was carried out and the liquid cash handed over to the INTERPOL bosses.

“ They collected even the coins that were added to the money” one of the junior officers who went to withdraw the money is said to have told bosses of the Police Intelligence & Professional Standard (PIPS) bureau who are currently investigating the matters on the orders of the IGP, Mr. Paul Quaye. Intel picked up by this paper indicates that the cover-up began less than 24 hours after the Daily Post hit town with the story when the head of INTERPOL-Ghana, Mr. Amponsah Asiamah phoned the father of the kidnapped girl who lives in Nigeria and asked him to come to Ghana to collect the money. Obviously, after the Daily Post’s expose, the INTERPOL bosses managed to mobilize an amount of US $49,000 which they wanted to hand over quickly to pour cold water on the credibility of this paper.

Yet another attempt to throw dust into the eyes of the public was captured in yesterday’s front page lead story of The Ghanaian Times.

With the headline INTERPOL UNDER PROBE, the news item, written by Francis Asamoah Tuffuor, said that the …”IGP had ordered the Police Intelligence and Professional Standards (PIPS) Bureau to investigate the circumstances under which a 20 million naira ransom demanded by kidnappers was handled by the Ghana International Police Organisation (INTERPOL).” TheTimes story went on to say that “an investigator at INTERPOL has denied any wrong doing insisting that the money was properly lodged into the Commissioner CID account as exhibit’. The assertion by this faceless INTERPOL investigator that the money had been lodged into Commissioner CID account sharply contradicts what the head of INTERPOL-Ghana, Mr. Amponsah Asiamah, told the Daily Post in a telephone interview last week. When the Daily Post insisted that information available to it indicates that DSP Peter Abila, Deputy head of INTERPOL told PIPS bosses that the money had been lodged into the police fund, a statement he later changed claiming the money had been given to DCOP Adu Poku, then head of Police CID. Mr. Asiamah asserted that this was not true, stating unequivocally that the $49,000 had been cashed and was in his possession as exhibit.

“The money is with me” he told the Daily Post. It was based on this assertion that he invited the editorial team of the paper to come over to his office the next day (last Friday) to see the exhibit for themselves. Why the INTERPOL-Ghana head would claim that the $49,000 was in his possession when it was supposed to be in the Commissioner CID account is very strange.

Meanwhile, investigations conducted by the Daily Post indicates that the INTERPOL bosses had no interest in prosecuting Seth Danso and his accomplice, Dennis, who on the orders of the kidnapper, Nwangu, attempted to cash GH¢10,000 from his account.

This is deduced from the fact that after going to the bank to take over suspects from Mr. Appiah Kubi, Head of the Financial Fraud Unit of Barclays Bank who effected the arrest, his statement was not taken and has not been taken up to date. “How then are the police going to prosecute those arrested if they have not taken a statement from the man who will be the prosecutions chief witness?” a highly placed police office who spoke to this paper on the issue opined. Stay tuned for more