£350k scandal: Asantehene’s managers failed him – Baako

Editor-in-Chief of the New Crusading Guide Newspaper, Abdul Malik Kweku Baako has described as untidy the manner in which the Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu deposited an amount of £350,000 cash into his account at the Ghana International Bank in London, UK.

The King is reported to have summoned an official of the Bank, Mark Arthur to his multi-million-pound residence in Henley-on-Thames and handed him a bag containing almost £200,000 in sterling as well as $200,000 in US currency with consecutive serial numbers.

Mr. Arthur, a dual citizen of the UK and Ghana and the bank’s second most senior executive, drove to the Asantehen’s home for the cash and then took it in an Uber taxi to the bank’s City offices for deposit in the king’s account.

The Bank, filed a complaint with the UK’s National Crime Agency after it became suspicious following the transfer of the cash the next day to Jersey, according to documents put out by the London Employment Tribunal.

Commenting on the issue on Joy FM’s News File show Saturday, Abdul Malik Kweku Baako who admitted he doesn’t see anything wrong done by the Asantehene, added that the transaction could have been done in a much better way through the king’s bank in Ghana to his account at the Ghana International Bank in the UK, that’s if the money was raised here in Ghana.

“The Nayiri, Yabonwura, they’re all overlords, but when it comes to that personality, their image, the value of their stature I would prefer that a transaction of this nature are not dealt with the way we’ve been told… I believe strongly with the benefit of hindsight, the great man will not do this again. He’ll not handle it with this mode of operation, that’s my feeling.”