| Two lawyers, Ekow Amua Sekyi and Kwame Owusu Asamani, who allegedly forged judicial documents and reportedly succeeded in defrauding a mining company of over USD 850,000 were expected to appear in an Accra Circuit Court on Thursday 31st July 2009. However, a hurried intervention by Mrs Betty Mould Iddrissu, the Attorney General, truncated the appearance of the two before court on the day, but the case has taken an explosive turn as the next hearing is to come on by late next week. Chronicle gathers that lawyers for one of the complainants have moved to the Supreme Court to demand a show down, considering the fact that intercepted text from the Attorney General herself, urging lawyers to drop the case. Already, the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) Headquarters of the Ghana Police, who investigated the case, have taken witness statements from two judges, His Lordship Justice Ofori Attah and His Lordship Justice Lartey-Young, so as to build a solid docket. The lawyers have been charged on eight (8) counts, to wit - conspiracy, forgery of judicial document, defrauding by false pretence among others, all under the Criminal Code, Act 29/60. Facts of the case available to police states that complainant, Samuel Gordon Etroo, is a businessman at Tarkwa, whilst accused - Ekow Amua-Sekyi and Kwame Owusu Asamani are legal practitioners. On 14th March 2007, the accused, Owusu Asamani, acted as lawyer for Axex Company Limited and obtained judgment in Suit No. BMISC 273/07 against Kwame Opoku and two defendants. After this judgment, he allegedly conspired with Ekow Amua-Sekyi, who was acting as lawyer for Samuel Gordon Etroo, and they forged Suit No. BMISC 350/07. They titled this writ ALEX COMPANY LIMITED. Accused persons fraudulently inserted SAMETRO COMPANY LIMITED as the 4th defendant in this writ although this company was not a defendant in the genuine Suit. On 18th March 2007, accused persons forged judgment - titled Axex Company Limited vrs four defendants in which they inserted a third order for the recovery of the mine known as Esaase Gold Mine and purported it to have been made by His Lordship Justice Ofori Attah. Deed of assignment Accused persons prepared a Deed of assignment unknown to Gordon Etroo and scanned his signature on it. They managed to have it registered at the Lands Registry with No. 28/2007, and presented it to Eric Ewen, Managing Director of Keegan Resources, who signed it. Accused persons, without the knowledge of Gordon Etroo and Kwame Opoku initiated a civil suit No. BL35/07 and titled it Kwame Opoku vrs Sametro Company Limited. They appeared before His Lordship Justice Lartey-Young on 20th March 2007. Accused Amua-Sekyi made certain admissions upon which the judge ordered that the Bonte Esaase Mine be assigned to Kwame Opoku, with this judgment, accused persons obtained the consent of the then Minister for Lands, Forestry and Mines, to assign the Esaase Mines to Howard Eric Ewen of Keegan Resources. On 18th June 2007, Eric Ewen issued Stanbic Bank cheque No. 021550 for USD850,000 to Joseph Kwame Owusu Asamani to complete the Fraudulent assignment of Bonte Gold Mine from Etroo to Eric Ewen. Accused Owusu Asamani issued a hand written receipt and accused Amua-Sekyi signed as a witness on 18th June 2007. On September 10th 2008, Samuel Gordon Etroo petitioned the General Legal Council against the conduct of the two lawyers. The petition states: “Mr. Ekow Amua-Sekyi is my lawyer and I trusted him so much that I made him a director in my company, which acquired a mining concession at Esaase in the Amansie West District in June 2005. Sometime in April 2006, a Canadian mining firm, known as Keegan Resources expressed interest in the said concession and my company granted them a license to undertake some due diligence on the site. Shock We were, therefore, completely shocked when in May 2008, Kwame Opoku called the company demanding the refund of his money. We expressed surprise and told him that he had already sent us to court and the matter was even pending at the Court of Appeal, even though we had made payment of USD230,000 to him already. Kwame Opoku’s shock was bigger than ours! He insisted that he had no knowledge of any court case and he had not instructed any lawyers to file any suit against us on his behalf. He further claimed that he had not received any payment of money, apart from an amount of USD30,000 paid to him by Lawyer Amua-Sekyi, but the same Amua-Sekyi came back later to collect the whole amount from him. Kwame Opoku said that lawyer Amua-Sekyi claimed my company was demanding the USD30,000 back, and that Kwame Opoku should rather go and take the concession in lieu of payment. Kwame Opoku, therefore, returned the money to Amua-Sekyi. We note with deep regret that even the USD30,000 never reached us. Please, at this point, we all knew that something had gone terribly wrong. We therefore requested the court papers from lawyer Amua-Sekyi ,but he claimed that as the matter was still pending in court, if anyone saw the papers, it will amount to contempt of court. Lawyer Amua-Sekyi then advised us to meet K.O. Consortium so that they give us a discharge and free us from any financial obligations. meeting in Accra At the arranged meeting in Accra, one lawyer Kwame Asamani presented himself as the lawyer for a company called Axex Limited. He claimed that Axex Limited had taken over my company’s interest in the concession because Kwame Opoku took some money from them. He said Axex Limited had secured a judgment from the High Court to that effect. We were told that Axex, therefore, took the judgment to Keegan and took USD850,000 and shares to extinguish our rights to the concession. It is instructive to note that our investigations have shown that the said Kwame Asamani acted as Counsel for the Plaintiffs in that suit, and our own lawyer, Ekow Amua-Sekyi acted as the Counsel for the Defendants. The first defendant was Kwame Opoku, the same individual we owed and whose name had been used by the two lawyers for the grand scheme of fraud. Kwame Opoku has indicated that he instructed lawyer Ekow Amua-Sekyi to act on his behalf because he knew him from the day he released the USD400,000 to us. Amua-Sekyi conveniently failed to file any defence. He did not also oppose applications filed to facilitate the grant of relevant judgments, or orders to facilitate the grand scheme of fraud. At the meeting in Accra, the said lawyer, Asamani, then gave us a discharge certificate to the effect that my company did not owe Axex Limited. Lawyer Amua-Sekyi at no time mentioned that he knew lawyer Asamani or had engaged in a suit affecting our interests. The same two lawyers were also in the phantom case of K.O. Consortium vrs Sametro. We later found out that our own lawyer, Amua-Sekyi, had signed an option agreement with the Canadian firm committing the company. He had no prior instructions to do so. When the directors confronted him, he indicated to us that it is just an initial agreement and that the proper agreement will be signed later, but he never showed us a copy of the said agreement until May 2008. My company purchased the concession from the Liquidators of the Bonte Gold Mines, partly with funds of USD400,000 from one Kwame Opoku, a businessman and personal friend based in Accra. In October 2006, lawyer Ekow Amua-Sekyi informed us that Kwame Opoku had filed a suit in the High Court against us to recover his money. Following this communication from the lawyer, the company released on or about May 3rd 2006, cash of USD30,000 to be paid to the said Kwame Opoku. A further amount of GH¢184,000 being the prevailing cedi equivalent of USD200,000 was paid into the account of the same Amua-Sekyi on or about 29th March 2007, to be paid to the said Kwame Opoku. payment Lawyer Amua-Sekyi later informed us that he had paid the amount of USD30,000 in cash to Kwame Opoku. He also informed us that he had made a further payment of USD200,000 in court, to be paid to Kwame Opoku through the Registry. Sometime in December 2006, lawyer Amua-Sekyi informed us that a firm called K.O. Consortium had also initiated a writ in the High Court against my company claiming that they gave the USD400,000 to Kwame Opoku and had, therefore, taken over the case. At all times, lawyer Amua-Sekyi never showed us a single process from the Court, but assured us to leave everything in his hands, as he will deal with the matter. Later in June 2007, lawyer Amua-Sekyi informed me that the court had given judgment against us and awarded a sum of USD1.92 million to K.O. Consortium. He insisted that if we did not make payment, the court had ordered that we lose our Esaase Concession. He assured us not to worry as he had filed an appeal at the Court of Appeal. On the date he had indicated that the matter was to be heard by the Court of Appeal, lawyer Amua-Sekyi informed us that a judge was dead and the court will not be sitting. From that date, anytime we made enquiries about the appeal, lawyer Amua-Sekyi indicated that he had not received notice of any new date, but the situation was in our interest, as the company did not have the money to make payment, should the appeal be heard, so we should not rush to have the case heard. We acted as he had instructed. On or around July 2007, lawyer Amua-Sekyi informed us that he had heard that K.O. Consortium had sent their judgment to Keegan Resources demanding to be paid. Lawyer Amua-Sekyi informed us that though he had tried on so many occasions to call Keegan, they were no longer picking his calls and that they did not want to deal with him anymore. After all the fraudulent cases had been completed, our own lawyer Amua-Sekyi, without instruction, drafted and executed a Deed of Assignment, purporting to transfer our interests in the concession to Keegan Resources. We make this report to the General Legal Council in part, because our lawyer SCANNED my personal signature on the document and sent it to Keegan Resources as completed. The Minerals Commission was, therefore, conned with this fraudulent document and proceeded to grant a mining license to Keegan Resources based on a document I had never seen nor executed, nor been informed about, but which purports to bear my signature. We had no idea of this until their fraudulent scheme begun to unravel. We are indeed shocked, saddened and very angry that all these stories were part of an elaborate scheme of fraud planned and executed to perfection by two qualified lawyers to defraud me and illegally profit from such an unlawful act. We have raised this matter because though we recognize our rights to seek redress under law, we are strongly of the opinion that these men who are parading as lawyers have wilfully perpetrated fraud on my company and myself, and committed criminal acts that must be sanctioned by law. However, professional sanctions for their actions can only emanate from the GLC. We have filed the relevant processes in the Commercial Court to recover our concession. We are also helping the police in respect of criminal aspects of the matter. If we have shown to the Council that lawyers produced forged court document, then urgent action will be needed. There is a canker developing in the legal profession and the GLC ought to stamp it out before it envelopes the entire profession. These persons pose a serious threat to the integrity of the whole legal profession. We urge the GLC to be mindful of the fat that if young lawyers could dream up such a scheme of fraud, including forging court documents and judgments in respect of phantom cases, then this petition ought to receive serious attention. Their conduct is worse than we could ever have imagined. We do hope that the GLC will take very strong measures to sanction them as appropriate.”
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