Mother and son convicted for selling fake cables

The 42-year- old businesswoman and her son, who were
arrested sometime in February, last year, for distributing substandard
electrical cables fixed with fake labels of a reputable electrical cable
manufacturing company in Tema to unsuspecting customers in the country, was
last Friday convicted and sentenced to 2 months in imprisonment with hard
labour.
Madam Evelyn Mingle, manageress of Panaab Electricals Shop
at McCarthy Hill Junction, on the Kasoa Road in the Central Region, was
convicted on three counts of conspiracy to commit crime, forgery of trademarks
and defrauding by false pretence by the Jamestown District Magistrate Court in
Accra.
The Presiding Magistrate, however, sentenced her accomplice,
Daniel Awotwi, who is her son, on same counts, to 50 penalty unit (GH¢600.00)
or in default he would serve 12 months in imprisonment.
The two convicts went through a full trial and the court on
Friday found them guilty of conspiracy to forge the logo of Nexans Kabelmetal
which they had fixed on some low quality foreign cables and passed them off as
genuine cables from Nexans Kabelmetal Limited to unsuspecting buyers and also
for defrauding one Kofi Tawiah Maafo with the pretext of supplying him with
genuine cables from Nexans Kabelmetal Limited.
Delivering her judgment, the Presiding Magistrate held that
the convicts stood out as persons who were primed to illegally take control of
the electrical business in the
country with their illegal activities and to deprive the local electrical
industries and companies from getting their daily bread.
She said the court took into consideration the impeccable
and excellent manner of evidence given by the complainant and the style in
which the convicts perpetrated the crime and the evidence provided by the
prosecutor in court, among other things, before imposing the sentence.
The presiding magistrate emphasized in her ruling which
lasted 25 minutes 47 seconds that the sentence would send a clear signal to
persons like the convicts whose business is to kill the local industries and
better their lots.
She said the court would not take such action kindly and
that the sentence was to further serve as a deterrent to others who are doing
similar things undetected in the country.
The magistrate, who cited some law authorities as precedence
before handing over the sentences, said, the ‘agent provocateur’ and the police
investigator who went under cover to investigate the crime have done an
excellent work.
She said that the “agent provocateur,” has acted to
ascertain the authenticity of the complainant’s claims against the convicts at
the time and the action was to serve the interest of the nation.
She however concluded that, the prosecution has been able to
prove the guilt of the convicts beyond reasonable doubt and that a prima-facie
case has duly proved the guilt of the mindset of the convicts.
The prosecution’s case was that, Mr. Kofi Tawia Maafo , one
of the complainants, went to the
convict’s shop to buy Nexans Kabelmetal cables to wire his house.
When he went there, Madam Mingle gave him two invoices, for
genuine Nexans Kabelmetals and one that she referred to as British cables.
But Mr. Maafo told the convict he was interested in the
genuine Nexans cables and they consequently agreed on a price.
According to the prosecutor, after paying the agreed amount,
the convict gave him a receipt and supplied him with the cables which she
claimed were genuine ones, but when the complainant got home, his electrician detected
that 12 out of the cables were of Reroy cables but fixed with Nexans Kabelmetal
labels.
It was there and then that the complainant realized that the
labels on the cables were forged and the wires too were fake.
When he informed the convict that the cables were fake, she
refused to collect or replace them for him, so he was therefore compelled to
report the matter to the management of Nexans Kabelmetal Limited.
The prosecutor, Chief Inspector Owusu, noted that, Nexans
Kabelmetal Limited then replaced the cables for Mr. Maafo and later reported
the case to the police for investigation.
He said while investigation was still ongoing, an ‘agent
provocateur’ also bought 75 piece of the Nexans cables from the convict’s shop
at McCarthy Hills and paid for them.
The investigator then sent another witness in the case to
collect them but after collecting them, he detected that all but one cable had
a forged tag and only two of the 75 cables were genuine.
The prosecutor noted that when the convict’s storeroom was
searched, about 100 boxes of empty British cables were found there.
He said, some of the labels were taken to the quality
control department of the company for further inspection, and it was detected
that the tag labels were faded and appeared to have been scanned and did not
come from the Nexans Kabelmetal company.
He said as a result the convicts were arrested and charged
with the offence.