The 42-year- old businesswoman and her son, who were arrested sometime in February, last year, for distributing substandard electrical cables fixed with fake labels of a reputable electrical cable manufacturing company in Tema to unsuspecting customers in the country, was last Friday convicted and sentenced to 2 months in imprisonment with hard labour.
Madam Evelyn Mingle, manageress of Panaab Electricals Shop at McCarthy Hill Junction, on the Kasoa Road in the Central Region, was convicted on three counts of conspiracy to commit crime, forgery of trademarks and defrauding by false pretence by the Jamestown District Magistrate Court in Accra.
The Presiding Magistrate, however, sentenced her accomplice, Daniel Awotwi, who is her son, on same counts, to 50 penalty unit (GH¢600.00) or in default he would serve 12 months in imprisonment.
The two convicts went through a full trial and the court on Friday found them guilty of conspiracy to forge the logo of Nexans Kabelmetal which they had fixed on some low quality foreign cables and passed them off as genuine cables from Nexans Kabelmetal Limited to unsuspecting buyers and also for defrauding one Kofi Tawiah Maafo with the pretext of supplying him with genuine cables from Nexans Kabelmetal Limited.
Delivering her judgment, the Presiding Magistrate held that the convicts stood out as persons who were primed to illegally take control of the electrical business in the country with their illegal activities and to deprive the local electrical industries and companies from getting their daily bread.
She said the court took into consideration the impeccable and excellent manner of evidence given by the complainant and the style in which the convicts perpetrated the crime and the evidence provided by the prosecutor in court, among other things, before imposing the sentence.
The presiding magistrate emphasized in her ruling which lasted 25 minutes 47 seconds that the sentence would send a clear signal to persons like the convicts whose business is to kill the local industries and better their lots.
She said the court would not take such action kindly and that the sentence was to further serve as a deterrent to others who are doing similar things undetected in the country.
The magistrate, who cited some law authorities as precedence before handing over the sentences, said, the ‘agent provocateur’ and the police investigator who went under cover to investigate the crime have done an excellent work.
She said that the “agent provocateur,” has acted to ascertain the authenticity of the complainant’s claims against the convicts at the time and the action was to serve the interest of the nation.
She however concluded that, the prosecution has been able to prove the guilt of the convicts beyond reasonable doubt and that a prima-facie case has duly proved the guilt of the mindset of the convicts.
The prosecution’s case was that, Mr. Kofi Tawia Maafo , one of the complainants, went to the convict’s shop to buy Nexans Kabelmetal cables to wire his house.
When he went there, Madam Mingle gave him two invoices, for genuine Nexans Kabelmetals and one that she referred to as British cables.
But Mr. Maafo told the convict he was interested in the genuine Nexans cables and they consequently agreed on a price.
According to the prosecutor, after paying the agreed amount, the convict gave him a receipt and supplied him with the cables which she claimed were genuine ones, but when the complainant got home, his electrician detected that 12 out of the cables were of Reroy cables but fixed with Nexans Kabelmetal labels.
It was there and then that the complainant realized that the labels on the cables were forged and the wires too were fake.
When he informed the convict that the cables were fake, she refused to collect or replace them for him, so he was therefore compelled to report the matter to the management of Nexans Kabelmetal Limited.
The prosecutor, Chief Inspector Owusu, noted that, Nexans Kabelmetal Limited then replaced the cables for Mr. Maafo and later reported the case to the police for investigation.
He said while investigation was still ongoing, an ‘agent provocateur’ also bought 75 piece of the Nexans cables from the convict’s shop at McCarthy Hills and paid for them.
The investigator then sent another witness in the case to collect them but after collecting them, he detected that all but one cable had a forged tag and only two of the 75 cables were genuine.
The prosecutor noted that when the convict’s storeroom was searched, about 100 boxes of empty British cables were found there.
He said, some of the labels were taken to the quality control department of the company for further inspection, and it was detected that the tag labels were faded and appeared to have been scanned and did not come from the Nexans Kabelmetal company.
He said as a result the convicts were arrested and charged with the offence.