Our Business Is Changing Lives; Crypto Dealer Fights Off Fraud Claim

A director at Global Coin Community Help (GCCH), a virtual currency trading firm, has described untrue, claims that they have defrauding over 100,000 of clients who have invested their monies in their business.

Kwaku Damete Kumi says the company, GCCH has rather transformed the lives of over 50,000 persons within the last 18months that they have been in operation.

“When it comes to cryptocurrency it is 100% safe. Whether we like it or not cryptocurrency is the future,” the GCCH director told Philip Osei Bonsu, host of Asempa FM’s Ekosii Sen programme Wednesday, November 28.

Demete Kumi maintained rather than seeing the unregulated business as illegal, the government through Bank of Ghana, should fashion out a legal framework to guide cryptocurrency trading which he said is fast taking over transactions across the world.

He added: “If gov’t is able to regulate it and provides legal framework, anyone who puts money into cryptocurrency can get their money back.”

Mr Kwaku Damete Kumi and his colleague, Mr David Opatey, are being interrogated by the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) for allegedly swindling more than 110,000 customers of their deposits to the tune of GH¢135 million in a crypto-currency syndicate.

He said he set up GCCH with the help of Opatey in 2015 to educate Ghanaians about the prospects of cryptocurrency and how it can help improve their lives. They started in Nsawam in the Eastern Region before opening a branch in Accra.

Majority of their clients, according to the Daily Graphic, were military personnel, medical doctors, policemen, Immigration officials, teachers and traders

Explaining their modus operandi on the programme, Kwaku Damete said they collect deposits from customers and use the money to buy cryptocurrencies which they trade on their behalf. They then pay the clients a monthly interest of 27 per cent for one year or 12 months, after which the principal and interests expire, with no further obligation to the company, he stated.

According to him, several attempts to get the central bank to regularise their business have yielded no results except that “they always tell us they are looking into it but we don’t hear anything from them.”

The government he said, must get involved and legalise cryptocurrency so that people can benefit from it. It will bring more businesses to the economy, he added.