Indexing government scandals one at a time
A Canadian man who smuggles $40 million worth of gold from Ghana every month has disclosed the kind of close relationship he has with Ghana’s president, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. Alistair Mathias, who is a gold trader with expertise in designing money laundering schemes for Africans, said that his work has given him access to every president or head of state on the continent.
Speaking in the final episode of the undercover investigations of gold smuggling in Africa by the Investigative Unit of Al Jazeera, Alistair Mathis, who is one of the main characters in the video, boasted about his relationship with the Ghanaian president. He (described as a financial architect) told the undercover reporters, who had posed as Chinese criminals seeking to launder dirty money from Africa, that his relationship with Akufo-Addo is a close one. He also claims that the Ghanaian president is his lawyer.
Alistair had earlier revealed that he has been smuggling $40 million worth of gold from Ghana monthly, which is $480 million worth of gold annually. The undercover reporters found one of the companies he had used in Ghana registered as Guldrest Resources, a gold exporter which is documented in the FinCEN Files. During the FinCEN Files investigations in 2020, the offices of Guldrest Resources could not be traced, even though the company is registered in Ghana and is a member of the Chamber of Bullion Traders Ghana.
April 16, 2023
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