Months of painstaking investigations by DUBAWA, a fact checking organisation in Ghana, have uncovered a business model involving one of Ghana’s biggest importers and wholesalers, Fareast Mercantile and a network of some ‘get-rich-quick’ business men who deal in expired products at a popular section of the Central Business District (CBD) in Accra called CMB.
The model, which is in flagrant violation of Ghana’s Food and Drug Authority (FDA) guidelines, as well as the United Nations Guidelines for Consumer Protection, has some businesses buying the expired products (consumables and non-consumables) at a beat down price from Fareast Mercantile and later selling them at CMB to unsuspecting buyers or others who care little about public health.
Pictures, videos, surveillance and email conversations taken and intercepted by DUBAWA points to a cultured and coordinated plot by top management members of the company in cahoots with some goods dealers to cash in on expired products fit only for the trash bin. All they need are willing buyers from CMB who will package and re-sell these items to unsuspecting consumers and this they have done for years.
But with the lead from DUBAWA and a swift surgical operation by officers from the Criminal Investigations Department (CID), one of the dealers, Edwin Sarpong, was arrested on March 31, 2022, with truck-full of expired products hidden under a few wholesome cartons of Dettol.
Another suspect, only known as ‘Bogger,’ is under police surveillance after he successfully chauffeured cartons of expired margarine, Colgate and Jacobs Cream Crackers from the food section of the Far East Mercantile warehouse to CMB.
Managers of Fareast Mercantile, represented by the Corporate Affairs head, Nafisa Quainoo, have since been invited for questioning by the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) in connection with pending investigations and possible prosecution.
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