Chief Moomen writes: A farce of a country – shenanigans of NAM 1
This is a five-part series, over the next couple days, expressing my thoughts on the current Menzgold crises: Part One- ALL ARE GUILTY; Part Two- MONEY SWINE; Part Three- THE BRILLIANCE AND FOOLERY OF NAM 1; Part Four- GHANA, LOOK AT THYSELF; Part 5- THE WAY FORWARD, IF ANY
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I have since paid 60,000ghc of that amount and working tirelessly to complete payment of the balance.
These series of articles represent my true and independent thoughts and feelings about the crises without fear or favour.
PART ONE- ALL ARE GUILTY
Should NAM 1 be are arrested and prosecuted, then all who invested in his Ponzi scheme should equally be arrested and prosecuted for aiding and abetting in a fraud. Hear me out: No one can convince me that all or at least most of those who invested in the scheme didn’t know it was a Ponzi and can claim righteous innocence.
They knew exactly what they were getting into and applied themselves enthusiastically, almost religiously, to it. The very few who may claim innocence and insist that they were deceived, at the very least, are guilty of excessive profiteering!
Here are some facts:
1st: Any investment scheme that delivers extraordinary profits beyond market rates should trigger red flags in any reasonable mind.
2nd: The widely publicized DKM scandal should have warned any Ghanaian about the nature and operations of a Ponzi Scheme.
3rd: Many individuals and institutions including the Bank of Ghana consistently warned the general public about
The most important point here being
Ponzi for the Elites
There are huge companies who invested their monies in
At the back of the minds of these investors- I bet- was the understanding that
The Customers’ Hero!
When
And his customers were his fiercest supporters and defenders. A sycophantic culture of
We read and heard sermons about the pull-him-down syndrome and how in Ghana we don’t like to support our own. A popular phrase was coined, Wosuroa
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It is almost ridiculous to hear how some of these customers are implicating themselves. One lady on radio claimed to have put an orphanage’s money in there. Some people claim they took bank loans to invest in
And there are those spectacular cases of gross indiscretion such as the case of one deadly agitated woman who went viral in a BBC interview claiming to have invested 760,000ghc in the scheme. Shit
So far as dividends were being paid, people turned a deaf ear to all the warnings. And they would have continued to do so. The investors knew what they were getting into. They aided and abetted in this grand scheme. All are Guilty!
Suffering and Smiling
It is instructive to note that a good number of the more sophisticated and educated Menzgold customers are quietly accepting their loss though hoping for a miracle. Some of these people actually have investments running into several hundreds of thousands and even millions of cedis. But they made their bed, and must so lie in it.
I belong to a group where a couple of my friends invested in
They said so themselves. One even advocated that the group should consider investing there. But for the outright and emphatic rejection of the idea by one of the group leaders, we may have done so. One of those who invested says the secret to enjoying a Ponzi scheme is to invest early and cash out while the bubble is still on. Because it will always burst. But you can’t really tell when.
He says he has made peace with the fact he has lost his principal. He is, however, consoled that he enjoyed the huge dividends in the past. He even claims he is on the lookout for the next Ponzi. NAM 1 certainly didn’t defraud this guy, like many of the other customers.
Maybe those who invested in the early stages of the scheme can claim they were deceived. However, they enjoyed those huge dividends and I doubt they are complaining. Those who invested in the last one year of the scheme cannot claim they were defrauded because there was ample information available for them to make judicious investment decisions. It will be interesting to watch a
NB:
The arguments I have made here may not be legally sound, but they hold moral gravitas. How do you prosecute a man for fraud when those you claim he defrauded were active and willing accomplices in defrauding one another. On what moral grounds are you doing so?
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Source: Chief Moomen (poet and playwright)