Cop Rejects 200m Bribe

A police officer, (name withheld), who demonstrated a high sense of integrity in the line of duty by rejecting a bribe of two hundred million cedis has enabled the Tema Police Command to bust fifteen suspected criminals who attempted to steal one hundred and seventy thousand bags of rice. The suspected robbers had contacted the police officer who was guarding a rice dept owned by Novel Commodities Ghana, in a bid to get him to buy into their �operation� of making away with some bags of rice, which had been imported by the company from Vietnam. According to the general manager of Novel Commodities, Dan Obimpeh, they received a tip-off that some people were planning to rob the warehouse situate at Klagon in Tema. �It was during that time that the robbers contacted the policeman, who played along with them to the extent of negotiating with them that they would be allowed to rob the place,� he continued. He added that the botched operation took place last Tuesday at about 8:30pm, when the thieves drove a truck with registration number AS 8684 F into the warehouse. �They were allowed by the police officer and the watchman to break into the warehouse, where they loaded 146bags of rice into the waiting truck before they were rounded up by policemen who had laid ambush. They also had a second truck with registration number AS 4125 D which was waiting at a filling station close to the warehouse for immediate reload after the first operation had proved successful, he said. Briefing a cross-section of the media in Tema, the regional police commander, ACP Augustine Gyening, said breaking into warehouse have become a new phenomenon in the metropolis as bandits have diverted from armed robbery. He said four warehouses have been attacked by these robbers who, until recently, engaged in armed robbery instead. He advised truck drivers to seek documentation from those who hire them to convey their goods, as chances are that they could be used for robbery activities. ACP Gyening gave the names of the suspected criminal as Mohammed Ali, Issah Mohammed, Awudu Kadri, Osman Haruna and Abass Mohammed. Some others are Ishmael Addah, Dauda Ali, Shaibu Issah, Samuel Teye and Garibu Amidu. The rest are the drivers and mates of the trucks, Mohammed Fuseni. Yakubu Mussah, Ibrahim Yussif and Shaibu Mohammed.