Kumasi, Aug 8, GNA - A Kumasi Circuit Court has slapped a 16-year jail sentence on a 69-year-old man for altering family property documents as his own.

Kwame Senti also known as Kwame Adu, unemployed, pleaded guilty to the charge and was convicted on his own plea. Prosecuting, Chief Inspector Archibald Kwesi Fandoh told the court presided over by Mr Richard Mac Kogyapwah that the convict, an uncle of complainant in the case, both lived at Mpobi near Ankaase in the Ashanti Region.

He said Senti, the only literate elderly person in the family, was close to family heads and was entrusted with documents covering all family properties including a house at Tafo in Kumasi numbered Plot 1 Block 6 owned by one George Kwofie, the latest family head who died recently.

The successor of the deceased family head did not handover the documents and the properties to him but he secretly applied for a letter of administration by falsely presenting Eric Agyei and Twum Barima as members of the family.

The court granted him the letters of administration after which he changed all the relevant documents into his own name. Senti used the document as a lease for collateral to secure a GH=A246,000 (460 million cedis) loan from a friend. Agyei and Barima are on the run.