A 46-year-old assayer tasked to assay 300 kg of gold worth $18 million and supervise same to be shipped to Dubai but failed has been grabbed and arraigned before an Accra Circuit Court.
Yusuf Mohammed Crufy, charged with defrauding by false pretences and stealing, has pleaded not guilty.
According to the fact sheet, Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP), Seth Frimpong, the Prosecutor, said the complainant, Samuel Opoku Frimpong, is a Ghanaian businessman resident in Dubai. The accused person, the prosecutor said, is a Nigerian.
The Prosecutor noted that in May 2021, the complainant was introduced to the accused through Billy Bonsu, a business partner. According to the Prosecutor, the complainant had an agreement with the accused to supervise his 300 kg of gold worth $18 million to be exported from Guinea to Dubai after it had been assayed.
The prosecutor said Crufy claimed he could not export the gold due to the Military Coup d’état that took place in Guinea at the time. Mr. Opoku said all this while Crufy claimed he was in possession of the gold because of his role as an assayer and as a supervisor and money was sent to him for the full documentation and exportation of the said gold.
According to the Prosecutor, the accused also claimed within the same period, Mali also experienced another coup and there was no direct flight to Dubai. The Prosecutor said the accused person has demanded and collected six per cent of the total value of the gold worth to transport the same to Burkina Faso to obtain another document for exportation.
On July 31, 2022, the accused person gave the complainant a tracking number for the exportation of the gold and he detected that the consignment was in Lome, Togo, pending the authentication of the export documents. It said the complainant, sensing the danger that they had defrauded him, contacted the accused, who could not give any reasonable excuse.
In October 2022, the accused called the complainant and informed him that he managed to bring the 300kg to Accra after he demanded and collected $150,000 to pay for ECOWAS Circulation Certificate and has finally deposited the gold at a secure storage facility for safe keeping which attracted a daily storage charge of $3,600 for six boxes containing 300kg of gold.
The Prosecutor said the complainant then paid $35,000 to the accused for safekeeping. On October 20, 2022, the prosecutor said the complainant came to Ghana for the 300kg of gold to be exported to Dubai, but he did not meet the accused who then directed him (complainant) to meet one Nana at Abeka Junction who took him to a security company behind a bank.
The Prosecution told the Court that the complainant met the said Nana who showed him a box containing metals he claimed to be gold and that the remaining boxes would be made available to him the following week.
The accused failed to provide the rest of the boxes of gold, and he has declined to answer the complainant’s phone calls. Crufy has been admitted to bail in the sum of GHS5 million with two sureties, one to be justified with landed property. The accused is expected to reappear on March 13, 2023.
