Exclusive information reaching adomonline.com has it that the President of Small-scale Miners Association, Philip Kwasi Akufo, has been arrested.

Mr Akuffo, according to our police sources at Enchi in the Western Region, was arrested in connection with alleged forgery of signatures.

65-year-old Mr Akufo is a director of Crisphil Goldfields Limited, a company incorporated in Ghana to do the business of mining and mining support services.

He, however, went into an agreement to do business with an investor called HK Xinding International Company Limited, selling 80 percent of its shares, representing 900,000 shares.

The new arrangement for Crisphil made Chen Yong, Liu Jiafeng, Guang Li and Philip Akufo new directors with Isaac Frimpong and Mariam Muniru as the other shareholders with share values of 112,500 each.

Details of Alleged Forgery

On the 20th of March, however, Mr Akufo wrote a letter he claimed was a ‘board resolution’ to the Registrar General’s Department, asking for all of HK Xinging’s 900,000 shares to be transferred to him.

He made Mariam Muniru, Isaac Frimpong and Liu Jiafeng and himself signatories to the said ‘board resolution, all on the blind side of the trio.

Mariam, Isaac and Liu have all denied signing the so-called ‘board resolution’ when Mr Akufo was arrested by the police.

How HK Xinging Got to Know of Surreptitious transfer of its shares

HK Xinging officials had paid Mr Akufo to obtain various permits and licenses including Operations Permit, Environmental Protection Agency Permit, Mining Lease, Prospecting License and Parliament Ratification, among others.

However, when a Russian company recently bought HK Xinging and sought the services of a consultant to streamline its activities, it was faced with the odd reality.

It found that all but one of the above requirements were not paid for even though Mr Akufo had taken monies to acquire all these permits and licenses.

Payment receipts and bank transfer documents in our possession show that Mr Akufo indeed took monies from HK Xinging in order to acquire these permits and licenses.

It is upon this realization that officials of HK Xinging decided to do checks which have revealed that he had moved to surreptitiously transfer the company’s shares to himself.’

Latest Twists

After Mr Akufo’s release from the custody of Ghana police, he is alleged to have led a team of men purporting to National Security officials to arrest some of HK Xinging’s officials who are Chinese nationals and handed them over to the Ghana Immigration Service.

Information available to us shows that two Chinese are still being held and awaiting deportation as Akufo believes their deportation will clear them off his back.

More on the arrest soon…