Man Attempts To Dupe Rural Banks

Officials of the Association of Rural Banks (ARB) Apex Bank Limited in Accra, have arrested an alleged fraudster, Kwame Owusu Fordjour, for attempting to defraud rural and community banks under the pretext of awarding them Millennium Achievers' Gold Award supposedly slated for November. Fordjour was alleged to have written a letter to 40 rural and community banks asking them to pay GH¢200 each as participation fee and to submit 10-minutes documentary of their projects to commence publicity on various media networks as a prelude to the event. The bank's officials handed over Fordjour to the police when he went there in resp0!1se to an invitation to come for further discussion on the project. He is expected to appear again before an Accra Circuit court tomorrow after he was remanded in police custody last week. Duke Osam-Duodu, Deputy Managing Director of the ARB Apex Bank Limited, who disclosed this at the Eighth Annual General Meeting of the bank held in Accra on Saturday, urged rural and community banks to be vigilant and be on the look for such fraudsters. The letter allegedly written by Fordjour, sighted by the Times, bears a UN logo with the acronym IFCD and under the heading Central Diplomacy, has a questionnaire attached eliciting some information relating to the bank's operation. It stated among others "in view of this quality leadership of history of Ghana and development activities of your institution, your bank is hereby nominated, among the few, to participate in achieving the Millennium Development Goals". According to the letter, the event is supposed to be chaired by Mr. Kofi Annan, Former Secretary General of the United Nations, with former Presidents J. J. Rawlings and John Agyekum Kufuor, in attendance as guests of honour, in recognition of the achievements of the three illustrious sons of the country. Mr Osam-Duodo told the Times that the bank received phone calls from the rural and community banks about the letters nominating them for the programme and wanted to know whether the Apex Bank was aware of such a programme. The deputy managing director said the Apex Bank was alarmed because the management which was the head of the rural and community banks, was not aware of such a programme and so they feigned interest and invited the suspect to come for further discussions. Mr Osam Duodu said preliminary investigations showed it was a scam so when the suspect came for further discussions he was handed over to the police.