A pastor, Mr. Seth Kwame Sallah of Rhema of Total Grace Chapel Int. Church, located in Atadeka, a suburb of the Kpone-Katamanso district, has been convicted and fined 1,000 penalty units by an Accra Circuit Court.
A penalty unit is GH¢12.00, therefore, Mr Sallah was made to pay an amount of GH¢12,000 or serve 12 months in prison in default.
The court, presided over by Samuel Bright Acquah, handed down the sentence to Mr Sallah last week Thursday, after he was found guilty on two charges of forgery of documents and possession of forged documents.
The ‘man of God’ was found guilty on Wednesday, 7, December, 2022 Thursday, but his sentence was deferred and the presiding judge ordered that he should be kept in police custody until Thursday, December 15, 2022 to make another appearance.
Prosecuting Officer Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP), Evans Kesse, narrated to the court that both the accused and the complainant, Mr Sallah and Anang Atoklo, reside at Atadeka in the Kpone Katamanso district in the Greater Accra region.
He said in the year 2014, the accused had a barter arrangement with the complainant, by which the latter supplied the former with building blocks and instead of paying him money, he was offered four plots of land located at Apollonia with documents, covering the said property.
The complainant also went ahead to register the land in his name at the Lands Commission. However, in November 2020, the accused went to the complainant and asked him to vacate the land, pointing to a statutory declaration allegedly signed by Anang.
The complainant denied knowledge of the said statutory declaration, and submitted the said document to the Police Forensic Laboratory for analysis.
Interestingly, the forensic analysis results validated the complainant’s suspicions that the signature on the Statutory Declaration was not authentic.
The complainant reported the matter to the police and during investigations, several invitations extended to the accused, including through his Secretary and son, who were all turned down. Criminal summons was served on the Pastor before he appeared before the court on August 7, 2021.
Just few months ago, the same Seth Kwame Sallah together with his Setho Classic Engineering Company Limited were again injuncted by an Ashaiman Circuit court from entering into an Estate developer’s land.
His attempts to stop the court from granting the interlocutory injunction brought against them by Mr Francis Adu hit a blank when the Circuit court after hearing the application, barred them from working, entering or having anything to do with the said land situated at Kuberkro.
Residents of Atadeka, Kuberkrom and Appolonia townships are also accusing self-acclaimed Man of God of forcefully taking their lands from with the aid of land guards and some compromised police officers.
Some of them noted that until emergence of Mr Sallah, there was no dispute over the ownership of lands at Kuberkrom, a community at Atadeka in the Kpone-Katamanso district in the Greater Accra Region. Development of the place was moving smoothly without disturbances.
The claimed that Seth Kwame Sallah and his Company came from nowhere and started laying claims to people land which introduced violence and land guards’ activities to the townships.
According to them, Mr Sallah has been a thorn in the flesh of people who acquired lands legally to put up houses or for other developmental projects in the area.
