An Accra Circuit Court, presided over by Evelyn Asamoah, has jailed a civil servant working with the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, Gabriel Gyamara Sarpong, to fifteen months.
The court sentenced Sarpong on his own plea of guilty for defrauding by false pretenses, contrary to Section 13(1) of the Criminal Offences Act 1060(Act 29). He was jailed last week Friday, 16th September 2022.
Nevertheless, Sarpong would be tried for falsely pretending to be a public servant, since he pleaded not guilty to the count.
The facts of the case, as presented to the court, were that George Mireku Duker, a Deputy Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, was the complainant, and the accused/convict an employee of the same Ministry.
The court was told that somewhere in December 2021, Sarpong contacted a witness in the case to meet and discuss about a business deal. As planned, the duo met about a week after the call.
Sarpong was said to have discussed a mining business with the witness, since the latter had been to various mining sites in the country, hence, could be the best person to execute the plan that had been conceived by the former.
So, in the same month, Sarpong, once again, called the witness on phone and informed him that the Deputy Minister had authorised him to mobilise his men to go on an operation for him. The convict allegedly went ahead and gave the Deputy Minister’s supposed contact -0244916900- to the witness.
The witness also proceeded firstly to Obuasi and engaged the Obuasi Divisional Commander on their mission. The witness further gave the supposed Duker’s contact number to the Commander, and when a call was placed, Sarpong rather answered the call allegedly pretending to be the politician in question.
Durig the said call, the convict requested a favor from the Divisional Police Commander to accord the team any assistance needed.
Although details of the said operation were not revealed to the court, however, an amount of GH¢200,000 was realised by the team, and the same was sent to the accused who had allegedly impersonated the Deputy Minister.
Interestingly, the witness, following their operation at Obuasi, proceeded to Manso Nkwanta for another mission, but his encounter with the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) blew the his cover, after having told the local authority which had purportedly sanctioned their activity in the Municipality.
Unfortunately, efforts made by the MCE to reach the said Deputy Minister on the contact number provided by the witness proved futile.
The MCE, therefore, advised the witness to report back to Accra and verify whether it was indeed the Deputy Minister who really sanctioned their task.
As a result, on September 13, 2022, the witness met with the Deputy Minister and disclosed to him that he had been working at the mining sites on his authorisation.
Mr. Duker, on the other hand, denied any knowledge of the said authorisation, and, therefore, sent for the accused for questioning, and he was handed over to the police.
The accused admitted the offense in his investigation caution statement to the police and indicated that he used part of the money he received from the witness to purchase a black Hyundai Elantra saloon vehicle, which has been retrieved, and also invested some into his building project at Amasaman.
The next hearing of the case has been slated to October 12, 2022.
