Court Testimony Traces GHS 84.48 Million From Menzgold and Brew Marketing Into Zylofon Media

September 24, 2026 7 min read

Deal sheet

Status

Unresolved. Nana Appiah Mensah has pleaded not guilty to all 39 counts (plea entered 19 September 2023) and is on GHS 500 million bail with four sureties. The trial before the Accra High Court continues; no conviction, acquittal or settlement was found on any source read.

Type

Settlement

Parties

Menzgold Ghana Limited, Brew Marketing Consult Ghana Limited, Zylofon Music and Media Company Limited

Amount

GHS GHS 84,480,811.00 into Zylofon Media, per a police investigator's High Court testimony: GHS 2,000,000.00 from Menzgold Ghana Limited on 20 July 2018; GHS 26,930,997.00 from Brew Marketing Consult Ghana Limited, March to December 2017; GHS 55,549,814.00 from a Brew Marketing Consult account at Bank of Africa, January to April 2018. The same testimony separately states GHS 155,552,141.30 moved into NAM1's personal account and GHS 66,000,000.00 by cheque to his sister, Abigail Mensah, from Brew Consult; those two figures are not included in this GHS 84,480,811.00 total, which covers only money into Zylofon Media. Separately, the criminal charge against NAM1, Menzgold and Brew Marketing states GHS 1.68 billion in total customer deposits were taken into the wider Menzgold scheme across 2016 to 2018, a larger and distinct figure not summed with the GHS 84,480,811.00 headline amount of this record.

Rights covered

Not a sale, licence or transfer of any master or publishing right. This record covers a capital transfer, and the criminal prosecution now built around it, that funded a Ghanaian artist-management and broadcast company's rise and signings.

WHAT THE TESTIMONY STATES: DSP Charles Nyarko, a Ghana Police Service investigator, gave evidence-in-chief led by Deputy Attorney General and Director of Public Prosecutions Yvonne Atakora Obuobisa at a High Court in Accra, in the ongoing criminal trial of Nana Appiah Mensah (NAM1). Per trade-press accounts of that testimony, GHS 84,480,811.00 moved into Zylofon Media between 2017 and 2018 from two other companies NAM1 controlled: GHS 2,000,000.00 from Menzgold Ghana Limited on 20 July 2018; GHS 26,930,997.00 from Brew Marketing Consult Ghana Limited between March and December 2017; and GHS 55,549,814.00 from a Brew Marketing Consult account at Bank of Africa between January and April 2018. The investigator's stated finding is that Zylofon Media "was established solely as an entertainment business" and that there was "no justifiable reason for the huge transfers." The same testimony states that separate, larger sums moved out of Brew Consult into NAM1's own accounts: GHS 155,552,141.30 to his personal account, and GHS 66,000,000.00 by cheque to his sister, Abigail Mensah. Those two personal-account figures are reported here for context; they are not counted in this record's GHS 84,480,811.00 deal amount, which covers only the transfers into Zylofon Media.

WHAT THE MONEY IS SAID TO HAVE FUNDED: Zylofon Media built a visible entertainment business on this capital during 2017 and 2018. It signed Shatta Wale to a three-year 360 management deal on 31 January 2018; the artist manager Sammy Flex was quoted at the signing saying "from today, the business of Shatta Wale is the business of Zylofon Media." Terms were not disclosed by either party; a rumoured package of $1.5 million plus a house and a car was reported at the time but never confirmed by Zylofon Media or Shatta Wale. Zylofon Media also held Stonebwoy under a contract signed 15 June 2017 that expired 18 May 2019. Both artists were also named by the investigator among celebrities whose public profile was used to promote the separate Menzgold gold-trading scheme to depositors: "the accused person used celebrities to induce our complainants to invest with A2 and A3," the investigator is quoted saying, referring to Menzgold and Brew Consult by their designations in the charge.

WHERE THE MONEY CAME FROM, ORIGINALLY: Menzgold Ghana Limited was a gold-trading and deposit scheme that Ghana's Securities and Exchange Commission ordered, on 3 September 2018, to "stop forthwith, all trading in gold without licence," a directive signed by Deputy Director General Paul Ababio. No source read by this desk establishes the ultimate source of the funds inside Brew Marketing Consult's accounts beyond the testimony's own description of them as Brew Consult funds; this record does not assume those funds originated with Menzgold depositors, only that the investigator's testimony traces both companies' money into Zylofon Media.

THE COLLAPSE: Ghana's Economic and Organised Crime Office froze accounts connected to the group on 15 January 2019. The Accra High Court froze further assets, and a 29 January 2019 EOCO order, signed by Jacqueline Avotri, named Zylofon Music and Media Company Limited among the entities affected; Zylofon FM and Zylofon TV suspended broadcasting the following day, 30 January 2019. The same week, Shatta Wale redirected his public bookings and affiliation to his own Shatta Movement imprint.

THE WIDER CHARGE: NAM1, Menzgold Ghana Limited and Brew Marketing Consult are co-defendants in the Attorney General's 39-count case before Justice Ernest Owusu-Dapaa at the Accra High Court. Citi Newsroom's report of the 19 September 2023 not-guilty plea, entered on behalf of all three, quotes the charge itself: "Nana Appiah Mensah through Menzgold Ghana Limited and Brew Marketing company induced Menzgold customers to part with GHc 1.68 billion." That GHS 1.68 billion figure describes total customer deposits allegedly taken in, across 2016 to 2018, by the wider Menzgold scheme; it is a different, larger figure than the GHS 84,480,811.00 the investigator's testimony traces specifically into Zylofon Media, and this record does not conflate the two.

THE CONTRADICTION ON THE RECORD: NAM1 has publicly and repeatedly rejected any equivalence between Zylofon and Menzgold. In a statement reported 14 June 2020, he said: "To say that Menzgold and Zyolofon are one and the same is a very low shot at logic and glaring incredible display of intellectual deficiency and bankruptcy." He remains on GHS 500 million bail with four sureties. This record publishes NAM1's denial alongside the investigator's testimony and the wider charge as an unresolved contradiction, not as a finding either way.

WHAT THIS IS NOT: not a catalogue acquisition, not a distribution or publishing deal, and no source read states that any artist's masters or publishing rights were themselves assigned to Zylofon Music as part of these transfers. The management contracts with Shatta Wale and Stonebwoy are described in the sources read as management and services arrangements, not rights transfers.

Territory

Ghana

Announced

2018-07-20

Primary document

Trade press

Sources

Read this before citing: NO PRIMARY COURT DOCUMENT WAS OBTAINED. This record rests entirely on trade-press accounts of a police investigator's evidence-in-chief, and on Ghana's Securities and Exchange Commission and Economic and Organised Crime Office public orders as reported by trade press. No charge sheet, court order, ruling, transcript or exhibit was read directly by this desk. Source type is recorded as "trade" for that reason.

GRAPHIC.COM.GH COULD NOT BE READ. Every attempt by this desk to fetch graphic.com.gh in this session returned only CSS, with no article text extractable. A suit number, MSFT/09/2019, and a judge named Justice Helen Amoah appear in search-engine synthesis tied to a reported 21 January 2019 High Court order freezing NAM1's properties, but this desk could not confirm either detail against any document it could actually open and read; a direct fetch of the specific pulse.com.gh article carrying that claim returned different, unrelated article content. Neither the suit number nor that judge's name is stated as fact anywhere in this record. The judge confirmed by direct reading of Citi Newsroom's coverage of the ongoing criminal trial, Justice Ernest Owusu-Dapaa, presides over the 39-count Attorney General's case; whether Justice Owusu-Dapaa and the judge named in the unconfirmed 21 January 2019 asset-freeze reporting are the same person hearing different stages of the matter, or two different judges on two different applications, is not established.

EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG (403), STARRFM.COM.GH (404) AND MODERNGHANA.COM (403) COULD NOT BE READ. No fact in this record rests on any of them.

NO CAC-EQUIVALENT FILING WAS PULLED FOR ANY OF THE THREE COMPANIES. Ghana's Registrar General has no public filing API and no manual search was run. Incorporation dates, share structures and formal directorships for Menzgold Ghana Limited, Brew Marketing Consult Ghana Limited and Zylofon Music and Media Company Limited are not established on any source read.

THE GHS 84,480,811.00 FIGURE COVERS ONLY TRANSFERS INTO ZYLOFON MEDIA. It excludes the GHS 155,552,141.30 the same testimony says moved into NAM1's personal account and the GHS 66,000,000.00 reported paid to his sister Abigail Mensah; those figures are reported in this record's afw_deal_rights field for context but are not added into the headline amount, because they did not go into the company this record concerns.

A DATE DISCREPANCY EXISTS ON THE SEC SUSPENSION. The ghanaweb report read directly by this desk, published 12 September 2018, carries a 3 September 2018 SEC directive date. Separate citinewsroom coverage of a January 2024 court hearing states a 7 September 2018 suspension date. This record uses 3 September 2018, the date carried in the directive report itself, and publishes the four-day discrepancy as an open finding rather than resolving it.

WHETHER ZYLOFON MUSIC'S ARTIST CONTRACTS OR ANY MASTERS WERE THEMSELVES TRANSFERRED, ASSIGNED OR TERMINATED AS PART OF, OR AS A RESULT OF, THIS MONEY FLOW IS NOT ESTABLISHED. No source read addresses this directly. Stonebwoy's contract is reported to have run to its original 18 May 2019 expiry; Shatta Wale's public affiliation moved to his own imprint in January 2019, before his three-year term would have concluded, but no source read states whether that contract was formally terminated, bought out or simply lapsed in practice.

WHETHER ANY OF THE THREE COMPANIES NAMED IN THIS RECORD IS CURRENTLY DISSOLVED, DORMANT OR STILL TRADING IS NOT FULLY ESTABLISHED. Zylofon FM and TV are reported suspended from 30 January 2019; no source read reports a resumption. No dissolution notice for any of the three companies was found on any source read.

OUTCOME UNRESOLVED. NAM1's trial remains before the Accra High Court. He has pleaded not guilty to all 39 counts (plea entered 19 September 2023); he is on GHS 500 million bail with four sureties. No conviction, acquittal or settlement was found on any source read. This record will need revisiting once the court rules.

THE afw_deal_announced DATE IS THE MOST SPECIFIC SINGLE DATE ON THE RECORD, NOT A SINGLE DEAL DATE. This was not one transaction but a series of transfers reported only as date ranges, except for the GHS 2,000,000.00 Menzgold transfer, which testimony dates precisely to 20 July 2018. That date is used here as the closest equivalent to an announced date; the wider transfer window runs from March 2017 to July 2018.

DELIBERATE EXCLUSION. Reported 2013 and 2016 incorporation dates for Menzgold and Zylofon respectively, which appeared only in search-result synthesis and not in any document this desk could actually open and read, have been excluded from this record and the companion article. The GHS 1.68 billion total-scheme figure, by contrast, is included above because it was confirmed by direct reading of Citi Newsroom's report of the charge itself.

A police investigator’s sworn High Court testimony has put an exact figure on a question that trailed the Ghanaian music industry for years: how much of the capital that built Zylofon Media, the company that signed Shatta Wale and Stonebwoy, came from Nana Appiah Mensah’s collapsed gold-trading scheme, Menzgold. The answer given in court is GHS 84,480,811.00, moved into Zylofon Media between 2017 and 2018 from Menzgold Ghana Limited and a related company, Brew Marketing Consult. The investigator’s own conclusion, put to the court directly, is that there was “no justifiable reason for the huge transfers.”

What the testimony states

DSP Charles Nyarko, a Ghana Police Service investigator, gave evidence-in-chief led by Deputy Attorney General and Director of Public Prosecutions Yvonne Atakora Obuobisa at a High Court in Accra, in the ongoing criminal trial of Nana Appiah Mensah, widely known as NAM1. Trade press reporting of that testimony, published in March 2024, breaks the GHS 84,480,811.00 figure into three transfers: GHS 2,000,000.00 from Menzgold on 20 July 2018; GHS 26,930,997.00 from Brew Marketing Consult between March and December 2017; and GHS 55,549,814.00 from a Brew Marketing Consult account at Bank of Africa between January and April 2018. The same testimony states that separate, larger sums moved out of Brew Consult into NAM1’s own accounts, GHS 155,552,141.30 to him personally and a further GHS 66,000,000.00 by cheque to his sister, Abigail Mensah. Those two figures went to individuals, not to Zylofon Media, and are not part of the GHS 84,480,811.00 this record concerns.

What the money is said to have funded

Zylofon Media spent the same 2017-2018 window building one of Ghana’s most visible entertainment operations. It signed Stonebwoy on 15 June 2017 and unveiled Shatta Wale to a three-year, 360-degree management deal on 31 January 2018. At the signing, Zylofon’s Sammy Flex told reporters: “From today, the business of Shatta Wale is the business of Zylofon Media.” Neither side disclosed contract terms; a rumoured package of $1.5 million plus a house and a car circulated in Ghanaian media at the time but was never confirmed by either party. The company also ran Zylofon FM and Zylofon TV. Both signed artists were named again in the investigator’s testimony, this time as part of how the separate Menzgold scheme drew in depositors: “The accused person used celebrities to induce our complainants to invest,” the investigator told the court, referring to Menzgold and Brew Consult by their designations in the charge.

Where the money came from, originally

Menzgold Ghana Limited took public deposits against promised returns on gold trading. Ghana’s Securities and Exchange Commission ordered it on 3 September 2018 to “stop forthwith, all trading in gold without licence,” a directive signed by Deputy Director General Paul Ababio. No source read for this piece establishes the ultimate origin of the funds sitting inside Brew Marketing Consult’s own accounts, only that the investigator’s testimony traces both companies’ money into Zylofon Media. This piece does not assume the Brew Consult transfers were themselves made up of Menzgold depositor funds; that link is not stated in any source read.

The collapse

Ghana’s Economic and Organised Crime Office froze accounts connected to the group on 15 January 2019. A further order dated 29 January 2019, signed by Jacqueline Avotri, named Menzgold Ghana Limited, Brew Marketing Consult and Zylofon Music and Media Company Limited among the entities whose assets were to be surrendered. Zylofon FM and Zylofon TV suspended broadcasting the next day. That same week, Shatta Wale posted on Instagram directing show promoters to his own imprint, Shatta Movement, for bookings, a move widely read as confirming his split from the label roughly a year into a three-year contract.

A wider charge, a bigger number

The GHS 84,480,811.00 traced into Zylofon Media is not the only figure in this case. NAM1, Menzgold Ghana Limited and Brew Marketing Consult are co-defendants in a 39-count criminal case brought by Ghana’s Attorney General. Reporting on NAM1’s not-guilty plea, entered on 19 September 2023 on behalf of himself and both companies, quotes the charge directly: “Nana Appiah Mensah through Menzgold Ghana Limited and Brew Marketing company induced Menzgold customers to part with GHc 1.68 billion.” That figure describes total customer deposits allegedly taken into the wider Menzgold scheme across 2016 to 2018. It is a different, much larger number than the GHS 84,480,811.00 this record traces specifically into the entertainment business, and the two should not be added together or confused with each other. The trial continues before Justice Ernest Owusu-Dapaa at the Accra High Court.

The contradiction on the record

NAM1 has never accepted that Zylofon and Menzgold should be treated as the same thing. In a statement reported in June 2020, after backlash over Zylofon Music’s relaunch while Menzgold customers remained unpaid, he wrote: “To say that Menzgold and Zyolofon are one and the same is a very low shot at logic and glaring incredible display of intellectual deficiency and bankruptcy.” He remains on GHS 500 million bail with four sureties. This piece publishes that denial next to the investigator’s testimony as an open contradiction. A court has not yet resolved which account is correct.

What is established, and what is not

Established from sources read directly for this piece: the SEC’s suspension directive and its exact date and wording; the transfer figures and quotes from the investigator’s testimony; the EOCO freeze order, its date, signatory and the entities it named; the Shatta Wale and Stonebwoy signing and expiry dates; Shatta Wale’s public split from the label; the GHS 1.68 billion charge figure and the identity of all three co-defendants; and NAM1’s own public denial of any Zylofon-Menzgold equivalence.

Not established: the incorporation date, ownership structure or current legal status of any of the three companies named in this piece, since Ghana’s company registrar has no public filing system this desk could search. A suit number and a judge’s name tied to a separate January 2019 asset-freeze order circulate in reporting this desk could not directly read and are not stated as fact here. Whether Zylofon Music’s contracts with Shatta Wale or Stonebwoy involved any assignment of masters or publishing, as opposed to management and services only, is not addressed in any source read. Whether Zylofon Music and Media Company Limited has been formally dissolved, or is simply dormant since its media arm went off air in January 2019, is also not established. NAM1’s trial remains open; no conviction, acquittal or settlement has been reported.

What this means for artists

Capital that funds a label, a management company or a distributor does not arrive with a label attached explaining where it came from. An artist signing a management or recording deal is rarely in a position to audit the parent company’s balance sheet, and nothing in Ghanaian, Nigerian or most African commercial law requires a label to disclose the source of its working capital to the artists it signs. That asymmetry is precisely what makes a case like this one instructive rather than exotic.

A company’s public profile, its billboards, its media outlets, its ability to pay a signing bonus, is not evidence of the underlying legitimacy of its capital. Zylofon Media looked, from the outside in early 2018, like a serious and well-funded entertainment company. The court testimony now on the record describes an entertainment company built almost entirely on transfers out of a gold-trading scheme regulators would shut down within months. An artist’s own reputation can become collateral damage in a collapse they had no part in causing and no visibility into.

Where a management or label deal is tied to a single controlling individual who also runs unrelated businesses, in this case gold trading and marketing consultancy, that concentration is itself a risk factor worth naming, independent of whether any wrongdoing is proven. Artists and their independent counsel are within their rights to ask, before signing, where a company’s capital originates and whether the same individual controls other, unrelated ventures whose troubles could spill over.

Finally, contract terms kept confidential protect both sides only as long as both sides remain solvent and credible. The undisclosed terms of Shatta Wale’s Zylofon deal meant that when the label collapsed, there was no public record of what he was owed, what he had received, or what obligations either side still carried. A confidentiality clause that serves an artist well in ordinary times can leave that same artist with nothing to point to once a company implodes.