The suspects involved in the case, led by an interdicted East Legon Police Commander, reportedly seized 13 gold bars from a US firm under the pretext that the firm was allegedly buying stolen gold.
Recommended articles
A licensed US gold buying firm, Director of Green Global Resources, at a press conference on Tuesday, said some high-ranking officials of the Police Service have connived with some individuals to dupe them in a Ghc1.3 million gold scam.
The suspects involved in the case, led by an interdicted East Legon Police Commander, reportedly seized 13 gold bars from the firm under the pretext that the firm was allegedly buying stolen gold.
The then East Legon Police Commander, DSP Emmanuel Basintale and 6 others, have so far been interdicted.
But the lawyer for DSP Basintale and his three other colleagues, Kissi Agyebeng in a statement said his clients “have borne in silence the brunt of the odium the publications reduced them in their name, reputation, and standing society, until now.”
According to him, the Police Service was initially given “the benefit of its stature that it would institute a service enquiry timeously to establish the veracity or otherwise of the allegations, should it find the need to do so upon their interdiction” but recent events have given indication that “the Ghana Police Service is unwilling to act within the confines of law and regulation in this matter.”
The lawyer also made the following clarifications on behalf of his clients
- Our clients were dutifully doing their job and proceeded to arrest suspects upon a complaint and after investigations, they arraigned the suspects.
- Our clients have not engaged in any criminality by any stretch of the legal and factual imagination
- The confessed suspects who had been charged with the respective offences before court were faced by the CID Headquarters
- The CID Headquarters has now declared them wanted again
- The substance purported to be gold has not been independently assayed to establish their nature and substance
- The suspects confessed to defrauding the complainants and switching the actual gold for fake gold
- The Ghana Police Service is perpetrating and illegality by purporting to hold a service enquiry in respect of our clients in flagrant violation of C.I 76
Meanwhile, the Ghana Police Service has denied claims that it has not been transparent in the investigation of the Ghc1.3 million gold scam.
The Public Affairs Director of the Ghana Police Service, Sheila Abayie Buckman said that she is surprised about the action of the US firm, as the firm is aware that the police officers involved in the scam were undergoing disciplinary action.