Ruby Wortordjor, also known as Slippery Ruby, a self-styled businesswoman, who has defrauded a host of people in the Accra metropolis is in the news again. She has succeeded in duping two gentlemen, including a journalist, over rent advance.
The two, Mr Daniel Kenu, a sports journalist with the Ghana News Agency and Mr Anthony Ayitey, an accounts officer with Wienco, paid a total of 4.8 million cedis as two-year rent advance at Banana Inn in Accra for a hall and chamber each.
Mr Ayitey told the Ghana News Agency that he and Mr Kenu signed a tenancy agreement with Ruby in October and July 2000 respectively. Little did they know that she was Slippery Ruby and that the house did not belong to her.
Apparently, Ruby had rented the four-bedroom house from its owner, Madam Vivian Ama Dorkenoo, also of Banana Inn in 1997 for 120,000 cedis a month and had ever since been sub-letting parts.
Mr Ayitey said Ruby made them pay a fixed water bill of 10,000 cedis a month each, even though, she only paid 7,500 cedis a month to the Ghana Water Company. She also collected 17,500 cedis from each of the tenants instead of 7,800 cedis as electricity bill.
Trouble started when the landlady, Madam Dorkenoo heard that Ruby had sub-let parts of the house to people and she filed a suit at the AMA Community Tribunal to eject her. And after a long battle, the court on Monday February 11 effected the ejection order.
The court with the consent of the real landlady gave the two gentlemen two weeks' grace period to look for a new place. Sources at the tribunal said Ruby had filed an appeal to claim some monies for the cost of renovating the house.
The landlady was subsequently ordered to pay over three million cedis at the Rent Control Officer in Accra.
The Presiding Chairman of the Tribunal, Mr Kwadzo Owusu, sequel to the plea of the two gentlemen, ordered the rent control office to pay Ruby after the balance of the journalist and the account officer had been deducted from the amount.
When the Principal rent officer Mr S. M. Cobblah was contacted by the landlady and the two gentlemen, he asked them to come on Wednesday, February 20. However, when they went on the agreed day, Mr Cobblah said he had given all the money to Ruby contrary to the rulings of the Tribunal.
His reasons were that the tribunal never gave him a written order and Ruby and her fourth husband, Rocgues, had harassed him persistently to a point that he had no option than to succumb.
