...Homelessness hit natives..
As the Accra Metroplitan Authority issues its one week ultimatum to full bloded Gas to vacate areas they have occupied out of neccesity so that the beach areas could be developed, Network Herald investigations have unearthed a clever ploy of insider trading and stock market manipulations by operators of the once upon a time UTC Estates to sabotage the economy of Ghana.
The apprehension of residents of Accra is that the new initiative will be one more opportunity for the "rich and famous of Ghana" to usurp the ownership of Ga lands to enhance the firther deprivation of the people of the capital. Indeed so scandalous is the issue of the defunct UTC Estates, that financial and legal experts have dared the NPP government to investigate the case of the misappropriation of Osu lands since the actions smell of criminality and suggests a recourse to the ever green "Doing an act to cause financial loss to the state."
The main victims, the chiefs and people of Osu have in the meantime, girded their loins for a showdown with the three Europeans and their Ghanaian accomplices who through subterfuge and political patronage in the Rawlings era, "stole" the lands from its aludial owners. Already, the chiefs and clan heads of all the four quarters constituting the Osu traditional area, have issued a statement warning "so called successor companies" to stop any arrangements with any company or person purporting to be Assignees, Lessors or Landlords.
The "daylight robbery" was hatched in August 1995 when D.K Hampton took over the operations of UTC Estates from Oscar Jost and employed the services of two "consultants" - Roger MacCormack and S. Mohammed Ali. Together with their Ghanaian accomplices, the three schemed for the liquidation of UTC Estates and appropriated the properties. Then, they allegedly bribed fellow Ghanaians at the Lands Secretariat and the Land Valuation Board in Accra and Kumasi. Our sources say full blooded Gas from Osu whose names we are withholding for now aided in the criminal deed.
The callous actions of these high profile Ghanaians whose names we refuse to drop for now, did not only deny the people of Osu their bonafide entitlement to their fatherland, but also destroyed trading on the Ghana Stock Exchange and denied Ghanaian investors in the UTC Estates their entitlements. Out of the folio of about 40 choice properties the company aquired in 1993, twenty had been sold by January 1995 with the company not making any effort to put up one single building. Rather they embarked on renovating their own bungalows to fool the government and throw dust into the eyes of their shareholders that they were undertaking development activities.
The properties include the former offices of World Space, Shell Ghana, NCS, the two huge edifices opposite the NCS offices that have been given to The Mormons Church and three others all belonging to one majority shareholding Adansi/Fante who has vowed to uproot what he calls "lazy Gas" from their own lands. His going price for one property is 800,000 US dollars. So while native Osu citizens are chased all over Accra as squatters and the "wretched of the earth" and industry suffers, one man has appropriated the wealth of the nation.
