Pastor Wanted For Fraud

The Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service has mounted a search for a 42-year-old pastor, Richard Adeti Kodzo Adega, for allegedly defrauding a Moldovian company under the pretext of facilitating a $6.4 million credit from ECOBANK for the company.

Adega, who is also the Managing Director of VKZA Farms and Marketing, is alleged to have traveled to Moldovia in November, last year, and introduced himself as a relative of President J.A. Kufuor who had been facilitating loans for investors.

He is also allged to have made a claim to the managing director of Cavis Coca Company, Mr Andrey Coca that he also resourced the presidential bid of President Kufuor and built a number of houses for the staff at the Presidency.

Adega is further alleged to have told his unsuspecting victim that he was the 150th millionaire in the world.

After convincing Mr Coca with these pieces of false information, Adega's host was said to have offered him $300,000 as incentive, footed his bills of $224,000 and gave him an additional $6,500 to expedite the necessary documentation for which a Memorandum of Understanding was also signed between them. Since he left Moldovia in November 2004, Mr Coca had neither seen nor heard from him apart from two dud cheques Adega issued to him purported to be a loan granted by ECOBANK.

Narrating the story to the Graphic yesterday, Friday, August, 12, 2005, the Deputy Director of the CID, Mr Patrick Ampewuah, said Adega had also made false pretences that his company, VKZA Farms and Marketing was a subsidiary of ECOBANK.

He said Adega's victim became convinced not only of his wealth and business contacts but also of his political links and, therefore, set out to work with him. He explained that after the two cheques had been rejected, Mr Coca tried to locate Adega but to no avail. According to Mr Ampewuah, Mr Coca then petitioned the President to intervene in the matter. He said the matter was then referred to the CID for investigations.

Mr Ampewuah said initial investigations indicated that Adega was issued with a Ghanaian passport number H0343575 in 1998. On his passport application form, Adega indicated that he was a Pastor but that was yet to be established. The Deputy Director said at the Registrar-General's Department, it was established that Adega duly registered VKZA Farms and Marketing in June 1996 with a certificate of commencement number C-68217.

He said Adega and his wife, Mrs Vida Adega, were registered as the directors of the company, located at Number 104, New Aplaku, in Accra. He said although the Registrar-General's Department had said that the company, as of November 2004, was in good standing and had complied with all filing requirements, a follow-up to the business location showed that it was not in operation.