Another microfinance fraud hits Atebubu

The dust is yet to settle on the financial crises that rocked the Brong Ahafo region with MDK at the center, yet, another scandal has hit the region with Patrick Naah Bonah and Leonard Naah, Directors of Network 21 Investment, allegedly defrauding people in Atebubu and its environs to the tune of GHC 3,937.673.

The duo, Patrick Naah Bonah and Leonard Naah who are at the center of the storm, are said to be blood brothers.

The company which is operating from two offices located at Atebubu and Yeji, has succeeded in collecting GHC 2,817,617 and GHC 1,120,056 respectively in both branches from unsuspecting clients.

Information gathered by this paper is that, prior to the closure of the company, clients complained on several occasions of a non-functional which eventually led to the suspension of the company’s operations.

The inability of the Directors to explain the system failure, caused fear and panic in the customers who decided to withdraw all their investments.

The clients according to investigations, trooped to the offices of Network 21 Investment for their monies but to no avail, only to be given frivolous excuses.

Since then, the company ceased to function and the two offices located at Atebubu and Yeji have been under lock and key without any of the staff in sight.

According to a source, the few staff of the company who wanted to assist the customers to retrieve their investments went to see the parents of the Directors who live at Asokore Mampong.

“They were sacked by the Directors’ parents who threatened to lose her dogs on them”, the source said.

“The staff say the investment by clients is about 4 million Ghana Cedis”, the source added.

This paper has gathered that some of the investors who got the information about the fraudulent activity, and the subsequent closure of the company, suffered shock causing some of them to black out.

It is rumored that one person has lost his life out of shock.

“He convinced the indigenes that the company is an oil company based outside the country and has a branch in Ghana which he is the Director. Patrick showed us the company on the internet which even compelled us more to do business with him. He gave us an investment percentage of 65% for two months which sounded good to our ears,” an affected customer revealed.

The company, Network 21 Limited according to checks was not part of the companies that the Bank of Ghana placed an embargo on.

Meanwhile, Police source say, the company did operated an account at the Yeji Commercial Bank the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) at Achimota in Accra.

Although the scandal has been reported to the Police affected customers lament that investigations have delayed.

The source also disclosed that after all attempts to arrest the two brothers proved futile, they wrote a petition to President John Dramani Mahama.

This paper has learnt that the matters has been referred to the BNI for further investigations.