The cat, the mouse and the cat-owner

There’s a popular Akan saying that “se wo tu agyinamoa fo a na watu momone nso bi” which simply translates as “when you warn the cat, you should also warn the stinking fish”. For the purpose of this article, however, I have substituted stinking fish with the mouse and modified the saying to “when you warn the cat, you should warn the mouse too, and also don’t forget to talk to the cat-owner”.

I recall that a long time ago, when I was living abroad, I received a request from a brother in Ghana asking me to urgently send money to be invested in a scheme which would yield some fantastic interest rates within a very short time. After he had explained to me what the scheme was about it didn’t take me a minute to reject it outright. Of course my brother was not only disappointed but also annoyed because I was letting a good opportunity slip away. His point of argument was simply that he personally knew friends who had benefitted from the investment. It didn’t take long at all before he wrote back to commend me for not readily swallowing the bait. The company had collapsed and many people had lost vast sums of money, he told me. The name of that company was PYRAM.

The ‘Money Doublers’ of Time Past

During my infant days in rural Ghana the ‘Pyrams’ and DKMs of the time were known as Money Doublers or in local parlance “Double Money”. Some ‘gentleman’ would come and settle with the folks in a small community and all that he would be doing was collect people’s money and in return pay them double the amount. For example you pay him say, GHC100, and in return you receive GHC200 in a matter of days. As simple as that; no documentation required. And indeed all those who would get wind of it early and have the courage to try their luck would surely have their monies doubled for them. The good news quickly spreads and within a matter of days many people rush to have their life savings doubled for them. The story always ended when people return to collect their doubled money one day only to find an empty room. The fact of the matter though is that the ‘Money Doublers’ of those days succeeded not because they were seen by their victims as some Father Christmas but rather as Magicians using supernatural powers to double people’s money for them, for free, you may add!

The Modern Day ‘Money Doublers’

Over the past year or so one major subject for discussion in the Brong-Ahafo Region has been the activities of some micro-finance institutions and so-called ‘Fun Clubs’ which claimed to be offering interest rates of 50% - 70% in TWO MONTHS on investments. Like the bush-fires so common in these parts of the country at this time of the year news about these mouth-watering deals quickly spread all over the place. While some salaried workers topped up their salaries with bank loans to go and invest others also sold their properties and added their trading capital to go and invest. And like the victims of the Money Doublers of old these were the 3rd, 4th of 5th ‘generation’ ‘investors’ who had been fooled by the ‘good fortune’ of the first and second generation beneficiaries. Some of them have since died of shock, some have had their marriages dissolved, while the education of some children have had to be put on hold because their parents or guardians have lost their businesses and savings. In the cat and mouse scenario, therefore, these ‘victims’ may be likened to the ‘mouse’ while the ‘cat’ obviously is the DKMs, God Is Loves etc.

This whole story has turned out to be as controversial as it is now due to the fact that rather than look at it solely as a cat and mouse problem it has been turned into a mouse and cat-owner issue. It is now more about the supposed action or inaction of the ‘cat-owner’ rather than what the cat planned and succeeded in doing. As for the mouse that ignored all clear signs of a trap and willingly walked into the house of the cat with the expectation of making a fortune, very little is being said about. People are now talking as if the victims in this scandal (the mice) were some innocent people going about their normal duties and in the process suffered from a disaster they could never have imagined. They may have suffered too much already to be scolded again but I don’t think it is fair to put all the blame entirely on someone else. They must be told in plain language that you don’t expect to find mushrooms growing in an earthenware pot (“nnye apotoyowa mu na yetu domo”.

And as for the DKMs and ‘Fan Clubs’ perhaps what’s quite interesting about them is how all of a sudden so many mushroomed in one particular region around the same time. But you can’t blame them because what happened is the result of a well thought out plan to dupe people taking advantage of how gullible they know them to be. They are fraudsters and must be treated as such.

Was The Pet-Owner Irresponsible or Negligent?

Irrespective of how ‘smart’ DKM & co. or how naïve, greedy or gullible their victims have been, however, there’s no way the government, through its agencies, can be absolved of blame for what happened. After all, isn’t the government the ‘General Overseer’ of all that goes on in the country? I believe the only reason why we have uniformed police personnel and other ‘invisible’ state security agency personnel living in our midst is to ensure that activities of robbers, fraudsters and other dangerous people would be checked and minimised. But here we are in this country where on daily basis, on radio, TV as well as in print, we are bombarded with adverts which are outright lies and only intended to mislead and deceive the public. Yet no one stops them. There was no secrecy whatsoever about the activities of DKM & Co. yet nothing was done by state security agencies about it. People prefer to put all the blame on Bank of Ghana only but what about all the other agencies who saw fraud going on but did nothing to stop it?

We see people on TV claiming they can make people rich overnight and in fact demonstrate how they can conjure cash to make people rich, yet no one stops them. This is an obvious illegality yet it is done openly as if there are no laws in the country.

Day in, day out, we hear adverts promising innocent young Ghanaian men and women juicy employment opportunities in Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Qatar etc. In the same frequency we hear chilling stories of the dehumanising treatment of how our young girls who fall victims to these swindlers ended up being sold into virtual slavery. Yet nothing is done about it and these fraudsters continue to operate with impunity. All over the place, there are posters offering our youth a golden opportunity to ‘study and work abroad’ – in Canada, Australia, U.S.A., Sweden etc, and some promising ‘two years working visa’. But this and many others are blatant lies that are put out there only to mislead the public. Yet state agencies, including the Ministry in charge of Social Protection do nothing about it.

It is therefore the irresponsibility or negligence of our state agencies that has brought us to where we are now in the case involving DKM & Co.

Kwame Twumasi-Fofie

Sunyani

kwametwumasi@yahoo.com