Hich Court Clears procedural hurdles; prosecution prepares to Grill NAM1
By Prince Ahenkorah
After more than a year of procedural wrangling, the Accra High Court has finally set a date for the resumption of testimony in the collapsed gold dealership saga that has left thousands of small investors stranded.
Nana Appiah Mensah the flamboyant founder of MenzGold Ghana Limited, better known as NAM1 will return to the witness box on 17 July, following the completion of a Case Management Conference (CMC) that had been stalled by his failure to file a court-ordered witness statement.
That document, mandated by the court in 2024, was only lodged on Monday, 13 July – a delay that has tested the patience of both the judiciary and the aggrieved depositors who have been awaiting redress since the company’s spectacular implosion in 2018.
Fred Forson, head of the Coalition of Aggrieved Customers of MenzGold (CACM), confirmed the filing and expressed guarded optimism that the trial might now move towards a conclusion.
“We are hoping that by Friday we finish with the cross-examination so that we can bring finality to the case,” Forson told journalists outside the court.
The timeline suggests the court is keen to compress the remaining evidence and submissions, though legal observers note that cross-examination of a defendant who has pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of fraud, unlicensed gold dealership, and money laundering could prove protracted.
MenzGold’s collapse in late 2018, following a regulatory clampdown by the Bank of Ghana and the Securities and Exchange Commission, exposed a gaping hole in the country’s financial oversight.
The company had lured tens of thousands of Ghanaians – many of them salaried workers and pensioners with promises of lucrative returns from gold trading and small-scale mining. When the doors closed, an estimated 50,000 customers were left nursing unpaid principal and interest, with claims running into hundreds of millions of cedis.
NAM1, who has maintained his innocence throughout, faces a prosecution case that alleges he orchestrated a sprawling scheme to collect deposits under false pretences, diverting funds for personal enrichment.
His defence team has consistently argued that the company’s operations were legitimate and that regulatory actions, rather than malfeasance, caused the liquidity freeze.
The trial has taken on a wider political resonance. MenzGold’s rise coincided with a period of lax oversight in the burgeoning gold-buying sector, and its fall prompted parliamentary inquiries and a shake‑up of the non‑bank financial institutions framework.
For many aggrieved customers, the case is not merely about recovering lost savings it is a test of whether Ghana’s judicial system can hold powerful business figures accountable.
With the CMC now concluded, the court has cleared the procedural decks. NAM1 will step back into the witness box on 17 July, where prosecutors are expected to press him on the flow of funds, the company’s licensing status, and the veracity of statements made to investors.
The outcome, whatever it may be, is unlikely to satisfy all sides but after nearly eight years of legal limbo, the final chapter of Ghana’s most notorious gold-trading scandal may finally be in sight.