An alleged attempt by a top official at Movenpick Hotel in Accra to spirit a gold bar out of the hotel has led to the unveiling of the fact that eight gold bars were hidden in a safe left at the hotel.
Strangely, as at Friday, no official report has been made to the Ghana Police Service about the discovery of the gold bars.
Stranger still, it turns out that police personnel arrested the Movenpick Hotel worker who tried to take the gold bar out of the hotel, but for unclear reasons, allowed her to go.
On Friday workers at the premier hotel wore armbands and sang war songs in the corridors of the hotel seeking the dismissal of the lady involved.
The alleged gold bars were found in an abandoned safe in one of the rooms of the hotel. The safe itself had been sitting for some time in the hotel’s storerooms until one official ordered that it be opened.
It is believed that the safe was left in one of the rooms by a guest who has yet to be identified. What is worrying, according to sources at Movenpick, is that the eight gold bars were sealed in an envelope that suggested that the alleged gold could belong to the state of Ghana.
The whole affair began to unravel after one Miss Nadja Muller, a German described as the Room Divisional Manager at Movenpick, was stopped by a police patrol team working out the Ghana Police Highway Special Patrol Team unit at the Police Headquarters, allegedly en route to Senchi on the Volta Lake.
When her vehicle was searched, what was described as a gold bar was discovered in the car.
According to highly placed sources at the police Headquarters, Ms Muller had no legitimate excuse for having the gold in her possession.
The strange series of events that unfolded was that instead of handing the lady over to the nearest police station or even bringing her back to the Ghana Police Headquarters for further investigation, the patrol team decided to allow her to go.
Our sources at Movenpick suggest that at about 12:30 pm on 25th March, one Noah Ayittey, the Managing Director of C2i International Limited, a security firm to which Movenpick outsources its security, received a call from Ms Muller. Her case was that she had been arrested while travelling to the Senchi Hotel in the Eastern region, by a police patrol team.
Mr Ayittey then drove to the place where the arrest took place, where he discovered that the reason for the arrest was that Ms Muller had a gold bar in her possession for which she could not give any legitimate reason.
Inspite of this fact, Mr Ayittey managed to secure the release of Ms Muller, and brought her back to the Movenpick Hotel.
Upon interrogation, by Ayittey, Ms Muller is reported to have said that the gold bar was one of eight such bars left in a safe by a guest who had abandoned it in the hotel.
Interestingly, at this point, instead of the authorities at the Movenpick Hotel making an immediate report, to the Ghana Police service about this discovery, the authorities have to date kept the bars in their custody.
Meanwhile, the issue has infuriated the Ghanaian staff of the hotel, who insist that Ms Muller be fired. Sources close to the workers insist that if it had been a Ghanaian, instead of an expatriate, the individual would have been fired and handed over to the Ghana Police Service for processing.
On Friday, the workers proceeded through some of the corridors of the hotel in a show of discontent with the whole affair.
“We are very unhappy about these developments because we see that when it comes to our bosses, they treat offences with kid gloves,” they said.
Source: The Searchlight
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