The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the now-defunct gold collectables company, Menzgold, has announced that as a goodwill gesture to customers of the embattled gold dealership firm, 500 residential plots of land have been reserved for them.   

Nana Appiah Mensah made the announcement via Twitter on 12 September 2020 in commemoration of two-year anniversary of the collapse of the company.

While recounting the measure of pain caused by “many losses”, NAM1, as he is also called, noted that “refreshingly, we celebrate many successes.”

According to him, one of such successes is Zylofon Hills.

He explained that Zylofon Hills is an “envisioned” modern smart city in the offing.

He tweeted: “12th Sept 2018; in retrospect, we’re pained by the many losses we count. Refreshingly, we celebrate many successes. We commemorate today with an over 4,000-plot envisioned new smart city coming up. As a goodwill gesture, 500 residential plots are reserved for Menzgold customers.”

The 4,000-plot capacity smart city will contain a helipad, sports complex, business complex, golf course, water park, sports stadium and solar power station.

Zylofon Hills will also have a shopping arcade, music museum, film village, recording studio, cinema, gymnasium, swimming pool walk of fame and metro station.

Meanwhile, an Accra High Court placed an interim injunction on an intended commemoration of the anniversary by the Coalition of Aggrieved Menzgold Customers Ghana Limited.

The Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Mr James Oppong-Bonuah, filed an order to prohibit the holding of the intended event.

In the order issued on 11 September 2020, the court noted that: “It is hereby ordered that the respondents, the Coalition of Aggrieved Customers of Menzgold Ghana, Isaac Nyarko and Fred Forson are hereby restrained from the intended demonstration to commemorate two years of the collapse of Menzgold Company.”

The Coalition of Aggrieved Customers of Menzgold had announced a wreath-laying ceremony in memory of the over 64 customers who lost their lives due to their locked-up investments in the gold dealership company.

The wreath-laying ceremony was meant to form part of activities to mark the second anniversary of the collapse of the company on Saturday, 12 September 2020.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ordered the shutdown of the gold-trading firm across the country on Thursday, 12 September 2019.

It also stopped the company from taking on new investments.

SEC further stopped Menzgold from publishing or broadcasting all adverts related to its activities.

SEC indicated that upon evaluation of the documentations of Menzgold, the company did not have the licence to deal in gold-trading, citing that its operations breached Act 929 and as well, posed “a threat to unsuspecting and uninformed investors”.

SEC had further warned in a notice on Saturday, 7 September 2019, that if the company failed to comply, the Commission enforce the directive by taking “measures under the law.”

The Coalition of Aggrieved Customers of Menzgold recently said that the government must add its members to the list of financial sector cleanup victims, who are expected to benefit from a government-sponsored bailout.

“We write on behalf of members of the Coalition of Aggrieved Customers to request that customers of Menzgold Company Limited be made part of the beneficiaries of the bailout fund for depositors of collapsed institutions by the Securities and Exchange Commission,” the aggrieved Menzgold customers said in a statement issued over the weekend.

The government’s bailout is mainly targeted at the clients of some 53 fund management companies that also collapsed.

Customers of twenty-two of the 53 companies are expected to be the first beneficiaries.

In all, a total of GHS16.4 billion is expected to go into the bailout.

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