Sahene

|| biomedical engineer || tech enthusiast
|| Hala Madrid ⚪ || waakye connoisseur || 🎾🤙🏽

[Sahene @SaheneArkoh]

@and_fiifi @Kwasi_Appiah_Jr @amoako_jethro Hmm location nu. That is why PPJ will forever have a special place in my heart🤣

[Bright Simons @BBSimons]

I shouldn't normally write such a piece on a matter that has yet to travel its full way in court.

Yes, the MP for Asante Akyem North is innocent until proven guilty.

At the same time, his story is a total indictment of the Ghana that elites have built!

The whole country is on the verge of becoming a scam-factory.

Let's walk through some of the highlights.

The MP was grabbed off a KLM flight on 10th May by Dutch Police on an American warrant.

Within a week, Parliament had found him a lawyer. The Majority Chief Whip nevertheless complained about lack of transparency on the part of the Dutch authorities.

Which suggests that local intelligence and law enforcement had zero awareness. ZERO.

Now we have the filla. Court records reported this week describe an 18-count indictment in the United States: 15 counts of money laundering and bank fraud, 3 of wire fraud, 6 alleged victims, and single transfers as large as $550,000, many during the pandemic.

The amounts in question run to millions of dollars.

Like I said, a court is yet to pronounce.

What interests me, however, is the pace of this MP's rise and how it aligns so closely with the chronology of scams in the indictment.

In January 2020 he opened Salt 95.9 FM in Agogo, with two of Ghana’s best-known broadcasters at the launch.

That is the same year that he is alleged to have defrauded a victim of $515,000 using the bank account of his parents' broke restaurant in Chicago.

A month later, he handed the National Chief Imam $4,000 and GH¢10,000, explaining that he had “succeeded after travelling outside”.

By 2021 profiles said he gave cash to more than 2,000 widows a year.

Then came the awards, half a dozen in about a year.

A whole bevy of news sites and bloggers published with gusto about how he had assembled a business empire within the few years since he returned from the US: Wealthbridge Limited, Smart Group, Real Estate, etc. etc.

The one I find most fascinating is the BOFROT.

Yes, some red-faced hype-guru actually said the MP's meteoric rise came from inventing a special mix for bofrot/puff-puff and then watching his business blow up. Bofrot. Specifically his "kub" brand of the round snack.

Clearly, most of us are dunces. But surely if there are such fortunes hiding in bofrot, Maa Yaa at Fanti New Town wouldn't have waited all this while for this burger to come and scoop it all up?

In January 2024, the paramount chief of Agogo commissioned a 3,000-capacity mosque the MP had built, and he used the occasion to announce his run for Parliament.

He later said he had “singlehandedly” funded Medikal’s sold-out night at the O2 Indigo in London in May 2024.

Every single one of those spending acts line up with the exact years the indictment mention as when the big romance scam transfers were made into various accounts he controlled.

In February 2024 the NPP held its primary in Asante Akyem North, a stronghold once dominated by a finance minister. The incumbent won, amid widespread allegations of vote-buying by various contestants.

The indicted MP ignored that market. He went straight to the 38,000 people who would vote in December, with a mosque, a clinic, cash for widows and a radio station staffed by his hype-men.

It was a landslide! 70.3% as an independent.

In parliament, he went straight for the ruling party benches. How else to get close to power?

CDD says the cost of winning a parliamentary nomination escalated from GH¢390,000 in the 2016 cycle to ~GH¢4 million by 2020.

It found nine political financiers engaged in serious organised crime, seven of them in galamsey.

IMANI has crazier intel it is still validating.

Open buying season for political power fueled by galamsey.

And now, it looks like cocaine is refusing to accept that galamsey alone can take the glory.

In early September French customs at Dunkirk opened a container of plastic waste shipped from Ghana and found 3.9 tonnes of cocaine, worth €225 million.

Ghana’s Narcotics Control Commission (NACOC) links it to the network of Jos “Bolle Jos” Leijdekkers, a Dutch fugitive convicted in absentia in the Netherlands and Belgium and believed to be sheltering in Sierra Leone.

Bolle Jos is said to employ Ghanaian bodyguards.

Four people are before the High Court in Accra, among them a 34-year-old East Legon spa owner whom the local press calls a “big girl”, and her fiancé, known as “Accra Chief” and suspected of being the network’s Ghana point man.

She says she did not know the nature of his business. They too are presumed innocent.

Dunkirk was not an outlier. In March 2025 intelligence officers pulled 3.3 tonnes of cocaine from beneath the sand in a tipper truck at Pedu Junction in Cape Coast; eighteen months on, the driver and his mate have been charged and the “prime suspects” remain free.

In April, Australian border officers found 320 kilograms of methamphetamine in charcoal shipped from Ghana. The opposition says a ship called MV Sankofa left Ghana after paying a fraction of its fine and was later caught with narcotics in Senegal.

A mess wearing a top hat!

The MP's fraud case is hardly an isolated case.

In August 2025 Ghana extradited three alleged leaders, two of them styled “chairmen”, of a ring that US prosecutors say stole more than $100 million through romance scams and email fraud; one was sentenced in July to 85 months.

One of the fraudsters in the long chain to that moment was or probably still is the most-followed Ghanaian on Instagram.

In Interpol’s 2025 romance-scam sweep across fourteen African countries, Nigeria included, Ghana supplied 68 of the 260 arrests: more than a quarter.

The Global Organized Crime Index now calls Ghana “a known hub” for romance fraud and scores the role of state-embedded actors in crime at 7.5 out of 10.

Friends, we are dealing with an epidemic!

With a consistent pattern.

But katanomics means that there is no real national learning so expect the pattern to replicate and eventually overwhelm.

Expect Big Money to keep showing up without any serious sign of genuine business acumen.

Often through a diaspora triangle of Accra, London and an American city.

Packaged into overnight philanthropy.

Expect every gate in the country leading to prestige and power to be opened up immediately money drops on the table.

Expect the Scam-Lords to continue playing on the stagnant Ghanaian sense of respectability and buy their way to palaces, mosques, churches, and dens of socialites.

With an occasional radio station to boot.

Expect these "glamorous entanglements" with power and prestige to buy immunity.

Of fourteen major scam/fraud/drug cases I examined for this piece, ten were set in motion by foreign agencies.

Ghanaian institutions predictably arrive on the scene later. To confirm, to remand, and set up committees.

The country has outsourced risk management to the American FBI.

Even as I write, another overnight sensation is probably cooking up the same pattern for overnight success.

He or she is probably dishing out charity to widows somewhere in the country.

Soon, there will be clerical blessings, then chiefly patronage, and, finally, floodgates thrown wide open. The "Dr." title follows and media coronation paves the way into parliament.

As the same Ghanaian elites mouth off pious platitudes about "national development" and what have you.

Howzat?

(Image from midjourney.)

[Ghana Police Service @GhPoliceService]

PRESS RELEASE:

TRAFFITECH-GH FULL IMPLEMENTATION TO COMMENCE 1ST OCTOBER 2026

For more information on TRAFFTECH-GH, kindly follow the link below https://t.co/vzo1P819Mp

[US Open Tennis @usopen]

HE DIDN'T REALIZE HE'D WON 🏆

Alexander Zverev exorcises his 2020 demons and defeats Shelton 6-3, 7-6, 5-7, 6-2 to win his first US Open title!

[K. @kwesi_dadson]

Aside feeling terrible about the idea of littering, one of my worst fears in the category “embarrassment”, is to litter for someone to ask me to pick it up 🤣

[Sahene @SaheneArkoh]

@brah_jeff Straight!

[Danny 🥈 @SirDanny___]

https://t.co/BUEjYLIjhw

[Ghana Armed Forces @GhArmedForces]

THE RACE TO SAWUA

The finish line is in sight. Out of 176 kilometres of challenging terrain, just 6 KM REMAIN!
The elite Ghana Armed Forces Engineers have pushed through with absolute grit.

Watch the incredible journey of military discipline, precision, and unwavering service to the nation. The Race to Sawua is almost won!

[Ohene-Bampoe Brenya @obbampoegh]

Our judiciary is gone. The politicians have succeeded. Be careful out there.

[Sahene @SaheneArkoh]

@joseakyin7 Years of training makes this possible.

[Sahene @SaheneArkoh]

@adonaithegreat @PrempehCollege Wo brɛ paa oh🤣

[Sahene @SaheneArkoh]

@elsie_effah @Gplarbi224 😂😂😂😂

[Sahene @SaheneArkoh]

@brah_jeff @GakpetorDaniel 😂

[Sahene @SaheneArkoh]

@brah_jeff @GakpetorDaniel Massa😂

[Sahene @SaheneArkoh]

@brah_jeff @GakpetorDaniel Yoo tiwii we hear

[Sahene @SaheneArkoh]

@brah_jeff @GakpetorDaniel Why you dey lie smh

[BBC News Africa @BBCAfrica]

Tanzanian teacher Mr Wakati Joseph went viral for wiping his pupils’ shoes and boosting their confidence. Beyond the viral video, he helps children with special needs discover their talents through music and crafts.

Produced & Edited: @BrianOsweta 📹 :@Eliza221Dominic

[Sahene @SaheneArkoh]

😂😂😂😂

[darlington @kp_darlington]

Quiz mistress: Kumasi girls did you ring?

Kumasi girls: No madam it was Prempeh college😭😭😂

[Sahene @SaheneArkoh]

@quakukevin @1lipton_ 😂😂😂