Popular Ghanaian musician Shatta Wale was detained in an investigation linked to his purchase of a luxury car and has been granted bail, the Ghanaian authorities have said.<\/p>\n
Wale’s yellow Lamborghini was seized earlier this month at the request of the US, which alleged that the vehicle was tied to the proceeds of a criminal enterprise.<\/p>\n
Ghana’s Economic and Organised Crime Office (Eoco) said Wale voluntarily entered custody on Wednesday and was subsequently questioned over the car. <\/p>\n
Wale’s management did not mention the US’s allegations in their statement, saying instead that the artist was detained over “tax obligations”.<\/p>\n
The 2019 Lamborghini Urus was identified by the FBI and US justice department as being linked to “a $4m ($3m) crime involving one Nana Kwabena Amuah, a Ghanaian who is currently serving jail in the USA”, Eoco said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Wale has denied knowing or being connected to Amuah, who received a seven-year sentence for fraud in 2023.<\/p>\n
He said he was a “third-party owner” of the $150,000 (\u00a3110,000) car and that he did not know who had shipped it to the country.<\/p>\n
Wale, real name Charles Nii Armah, is one of Ghana’s best-known musicians. <\/p>\n
He has built a hugely successful career on Jamaica’s dancehall sound, and boosted his global profile by collaborating with Beyonc\u00e9 on her 2019 song Already.<\/p>\n
After being questioned, Wale was granted bail of 10,000,000 Ghanaian cedis (\u00a3910,00; \u00a3675,000), Eoco said. <\/p>\n
The musician was later released after paying the bail which was reduced to $454,000, his management said. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a small crowd of Wale’s fans gathered outside Eoco’s offices in the capital city Accra to show solidarity with the musician.<\/p>\n
Eoco previously said Wale’s Lamborghini would be returned to the US to aid in the restitution of Amuah’s victims.<\/p>\n
Amuah and his co-conspirators had impersonated vendors to defraud nearly 70 public and private organisations across the country, US court records show.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Wale’s management urged fans to remain calm and avoid speculation while the musician remained in detention.<\/p>\n
“We want to assure all fans and the general public that his legal team is fully engaged and actively working with the authorities to resolve this matter,” the statement said.<\/p>\n
The seizure of Wale’s car is part of a broader operation – Ghana has been working with the US to dismantle an international fraud network that targets Americans.<\/p>\n
This month, the FBI and US Justice Department extradited and arrested three Ghanaian nationals alleged to be the masterminds of a $100m fraud scheme, which involved romance scams and phishing attacks. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Popular Ghanaian musician Shatta Wale was detained in an investigation linked to his purchase of a luxury car…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87365,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-87364","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}