I will not apologize – Sam George to Real Estate Developers on his money laundering comment
The Member of Parliament for Ningo Pampram Sam George says he will not apologise for his comments on the real estate industry in Ghana.
The association was unhappy about comments Sam George made on Newsfile on Joy News channel on Saturday July 22, 2023 describing the real estate industry as a channel to launder money.
Sam George lamented that the real estate business in Ghana was a channel for money laundering:
“Real estate business in Ghana is money laundering. If our authorities want to deal with it, they will deal with it,” Sam George lamented.
He explained that “the cost of real estate in Ghana is not justifiable by any stretch. You keep seeing all these new high-rise buildings going up and they are selling them for half a million, a million dollars and they keep buying and buying amongst themselves.”
“…I have dirty money to clean, I put up a real estate property, you have dirty money you come and buy the property from me and then automatically your money becomes clean, then tomorrow you also start building your own then I come back and buy and we are just cleaning the money,” Sam George said on the show
The association as a results issued a statement demanding a retraction and an apology or seek legal redress as they considered the MP’s comment injurious to their businesses.
“It is therefore an affront to our genuine hardworking members for this Honorable MP to make such an unguarded and irresponsible utterance without offering any proof whatsoever. We demand an immediate unqualified apology and retraction of this unfortunate statement within 7 days of this press statement,” the statement read in part.
“We however, wish to serve him notice and notice is hereby served that we reserve our right to seek legal redress should he not retract his unfortunate comments and apologize accordingly.” GREDA statement said.
The threat seem to have backfired as the lawmaker said in a statement that he would not retract nor apologise.
” I have taken note of your release but I do not intend to render an apology qualified or not no make any retraction. The truth is fearless in the face of intimidation and bold in the interest of our Nation” The MP wrote.
The Association, however, reminded the lawmaker that as part of efforts to ensure the real estate sector is sanitized, it collaborates with the Economic Crime and Intelligence Office (EOCO) and Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) and other parallel state agencies to implement of the Anti-Money Laundering Law, AML (Act 749) as amended.
Credit to 247newsgh
