Drama unfolded at the Fast Track High Court in Accra on Tuesday when two persons who had been convicted together with an ex-police officer for defrauding a businessman of $700,000 were found to have absconded from the courtroom when their sentences were being handed down.<\/p>\n
The two, Jeffery Kofi Boakye and Paul Osei Tutu, as well as Seth Dzamesi, the ex-police officer, were sentenced to 15 years imprisonment each, but to the surprise of many, Boakye and Tutu were nowhere to be found after the court had pronounced the sentences.<\/p>\n
Boakye and Tutu had earlier responded to their names when the case was called.<\/p>\n
The court, presided over by Mr Justice U.P. Dery, therefore, issued a bench warrant for their arrest.<\/p>\n
The three convicts had been found guilty by the court on charges of conspiracy to commit crime and defrauding by false pretences.<\/p>\n
The court had, earlier during the trial, issued a bench warrant for the arrest of two other accomplices, Mike Doe and Evans Akafia, who failed to appear to stand trial.<\/p>\n
The convicts and their accomplices took the money under the pretext of supplying 75 kilogrammes of gold to the complainant, who is a businessman and representative of Tijani Resource Company Limited, but it turned out later to be a sham.<\/p>\n
Handing down the sentences, the trial judge said the youth should try to earn money and not to defraud, noting that the amount involved in the matter was huge.<\/p>\n
Prosecutor<\/strong><\/p>\n The prosecutor, Nii Kpakpo Addo, a State Attorney, prayed the court to hand the accused persons a deterrent sentence to ward off potential or would-be fraudsters.<\/p>\n According to the prosecution, the accused persons did not show any remorse, considering the hardship inflicted on the complainant.<\/p>\n He noted that the country was wooing investors to do business here and it would be prudent for the court to give the accused persons a deterrent sentence so that investors would know that the laws of the country would protect them.<\/p>\n Defence counsel, however, prayed for mitigation, saying the accused persons were young and would have to live fruitful lives for society and their families.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Source: GNA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Drama unfolded at the Fast Track High Court in Accra on Tuesday when two persons who had been convicted together with an ex-police officer for defrauding a businessman of $700,000 were found to have absconded from the courtroom when their sentences were being handed down. The two, Jeffery Kofi Boakye and Paul Osei Tutu, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":19899,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[38,17],"class_list":["post-19897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-palaver-newspaper","tag-wassa-akropong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}