Ghana MP Warns Against Cryptocurrency Ponzi Schemes

By Rishma Banerjee

Ama Pomaa Boateng, Member of Parliament from Ghana’s Juaben town has advised people to be cautious while making investments in cryptocurrency. She believes that 110,000 investors were scammed in 2018 alone through a cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme that had ensured immense returns, according to a local media’s outlet report on March 28.

The report says that Ama Pomaa Boateng spoke explicitly to the scheme which is named Global Coin Community Help and was promising investors huge returns only to walk away with $25.7 Million (GHC135 million). 109,259 Ghanaians were affected by the scam and even though the perpetrators of the crime had been apprehended by the country’s Economic and Organised Crime Office, they were later released on bail. People had been promised a monthly return of at least 27 per cent for a year.

Boateng elaborated that the anonymity of cryptocurrency transactions makes it more challenging to identify transacting parties, as a result of which compliance becomes an issue.

The chairman of the finance committee of Parliament, Dr. Mark Assibey Yeboah, is of the opinion that anyone who trades cryptocurrency is carrying out an illegal transaction. He added that the Central bank does not oversee such a transaction and until the Bank of Ghana takes control, the use of digital assets will not be safe in the West African country.

With the growth of cryptocurrencies, both in terms of adoption and use cases, there has also been an exponential growth in the number of illegal activities related to the same. A crime of this nature is one among many others in the space. Several platforms like Bitconnect and Hextracoin stopped all operations, in 2018 which led to losses on the part of investors. Most of the projects which were launched in 2017 failed to live up to the second quarter of 2018 and a lot was blamed on the falling rates of Bitcoin. The same can be said about a number of cryptocurrency exchanges that were hacked at that time, resulting in a loss of about $850 million.