Aggrieved Menzgold customers vow to intensify protests in 2019

• Posted on January 2, 2019
• by Ellsamwise King
• Comment

Some aggrieved customers of Menzgold have stated their intentions to intensify their protests in an attempt to retrieve their locked up capital.

The customers have, for the past six months, been demanding the payment of their principal investments after the gold dealership company was instructed by the Securities and Exchange Commission to halt their gold trading operations with the public.

In an interview, Chairman of the coalition of aggrieved Menzgold customers, Timothy Binob revealed that the group will on January 8 embark on the first of its demonstrations in 2019 to compel the company to pay their principal investments.

“The Coalition of aggrieved customers of Menzgold have not been involved in the celebration of the season and we are very wild and aggrieved. In our plans for the new and the first week of this year, there is going to be a very massive demonstration again in Kumasi, after Kumasi countless demonstration will follow up in Accra and Tarkwa,” he said.

Last year, Over two hundred customers of Menzgold besieged the premises of the company’s head office at Dzorwulu to demand payment of their locked up investments.

Some of the customers who spoke to Citi News’ Pearl Akanya Ofori expressed their frustration with the company.

They threatened to stage further protests at the premises of the Bank of Ghana and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

“We will continue to pursue every means in order to get our money. It is not going to be a one-day thing. SEC should be expecting us, BoG should be expecting us. We will surely come to their place and the Presidency because all of them have neglected us,” an aggrieved customer said.

On December 19, some 100 retired and active Police Officers at the Kasoa Divisional Police Command in the Central Region also filed a writ at the Accra High Court against the company.

Menzgold was asked to suspend its gold trading operations with the public by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

According to the SEC, Menzgold had been dealing in the purchase and deposit of gold collectables from the public and issuing contracts with guaranteed returns with clients, without a valid license from the Commission.

This, the SEC said this was in contravention of “section 109 of Act 929 with consequences under section 2016 (I) of the same Act.”

The company was however cleared to continue its “other businesses of assaying, purchasing gold from small-scale miners and export of gold.”

Despite initial protests, Menzgold complied with the directive. It has however failed to fully pay its numerous aggrieved customers the value on their gold deposits as well as their entire investments.