BY NT CORRESPONDENT.
The Directorate of Criminal Investigations wants to be allowed to detain a Benin national suspected of Sh600 Million gold fraud for two weeks, pending conclusion of investigations.
The DCI through investigating Sergeant Charles Odhiambo urged Milimani Chief Magistrate Lukas Onyina to detain Salem Frejus Hector Joyau Ahossi at Capitol Hill Police pending conclusion of investigations.
The police officer said the suspect was arrested on October 25 and detained at Capitol Hill Station after the matter was reported at the station on September 27, by Maxime Harouna Sawadogo, a Canadian citizen.
According to sergeant Odhiambo, Joyao persuaded the Canadian to join the gold business on August 17, after meeting at Christian Action Evangelisation, where they both worship.
“The complainant had known the respondent for a period of about 3 months at the time of their interactions in the chapel where the respondent told the complainant that he had business partners in Africa who had a lot of gold available for sale and had identified the buyers from Belgium and was only missing someone to invest in the processing of the gold,” the officer said in the application.
It is alleged that Hector told Harouna that the gold consignment was to be sold at USD 35,000 per kilogramme and that the duo would share profits by half.
According to the detective, Harouna developed an interest in the business and issued his company a cheque (Royal Bank of Canada) for an amount of USD 631,435 in the names of Hector.
However, the transaction didn’t go through since the amount was too large.
It is alleged that Hector then provided Harare a different account numbers held at Stanbic Bank Ghana Limited alleging that the money would directly be received by the gold seller in Ghana by the name of Adjafash Company Limited, who was said to be the agent.
The prosecution then told the court that after the transaction of USD 5,478,417.70 which was to process a sale of 490 kgs of gold went through, Harouna started giving excuses about the shipping of the gold and later told him that the gold was to be shipped to Kenya before being shipped to Belgium for sale.
Harouna then decided to travel to Kenya to confirm the whole process where he was taken to a warehouse in a posh estate and shown boxes that were alleged to be containing gold but wasn’t allowed to inspect in order to confirm whether it was gold or not.
The court further heard that Harouna started becoming suspicious and contracted a Kenyan lawyer to help in the processing if the contract where he discovered that the whole thing was a charade and that he had been scammed.
“The prosecution therefore seeks for 14 days to allow the Investigative officer to be able to record all of the witnesses’ statements some of which are in Belgium,” he said.
The court will rule on the application on October 29.
