More than a dozen customers of Real Estate Company, Romeoville Properties in Kokomlemle, Accra, are calling on the Ministry of Works and Housing and the Ghana Real Estate Development Association to intervene in what they suspect to be a fraudulent rip-off by the company’s CEO, Gabriel Zanu.
These customers, who jointly bought parcels of land at Gbetsile, a developing community within the Kpone Katamanso Municipality said the company in 2020, demanded they returned all their signed and stamped indentures due to a dispute between the royal families of Apolonia and Gbetsile which demanded that both families’ names are imprinted on the indenture.
It has been three years and clients said all efforts to get their indentures returned have proven futile.
Meanwhile, checks within the company showed that other clients who had not developed their lands, though paid for, have had them confiscated and swapped for different parcels of land and all are in breach of the terms and agreements the company signed with its customers.
“I live in the US and upon hearing an advert about this company on Sweet Melodies, I decided to buy and develop a plot of land. Till date, I have invested almost 100,000 cedis. As I speak, I don’t have my indenture returned, after almost 3 years and the CEO too is being slippery, he doesn’t pick calls,” a client, who chose to be called Kofi Agyapong stated.
A visit to the site showed that all works had been halted with investments nearing 1 million cedis on the balance.
Meanwhile, clients of the company are insisting on the government to stamp out the charlatans in the housing sector to make it attractive to investors abroad.
“We say year of return, Ghana is a destination for investors, and yet, we come down and invest only to be defrauded, that’s a travesty. We won’t advice anyone abroad to buy land in Ghana,” another client, based in the UK stated.
Management and CEO of Romeoville Properties, Gabriel Zanu, are yet to respond to these concerns as the company still engages in the active business of land acquisition and rentals in Ghana.
