A couple of weeks ago, we posted a story about Tingo Mobile and its red flags captured by a company called Hindenburg Research.
We followed up on a couple of leads including its non-registration with most of the Ghanaian regulators including Bank of Ghana, National Communications and Authority, and the Ghana Data Protection Commission.
We want to focus and spotlight the individuals running Tingo Inc. Today, we’re focusing on Tingo Inc president Chris Cleverly.
Who Is Chris Cleverly
Chris Cleverly is currently the president of Tingo Inc and also the CEO of KamariPay, a crypto company. He is also a lawyer and entrepreneur.
He founded the Trafalgar Chambers in the U.K. and became the youngest head of chambers in over a century.
In 2005, he founded the Made In Africa Foundation, an organization whose mission is to bring the dream of systemic infrastructure change to Africa.
He is a co-architect and founder of the $1.5 billion Africa50 fund with the African Development Bank which has been the lead investor in a number of large-scale renewable energy projects on the continent.
Farming, Cannabis, and Crypto
In 2017, he joined the company African Potash as chair to help the company with the growing and importation of medicinal cannabis to the UK.
African Potash would later pivot and change its name to Block Commodities to focus on blockchain in 2018. The company would focus on linking smallholder farmers with local traders, brokers, storage, transportation, and commodity buyers on the blockchain to help raise productivity and potentially obtain a better price for their produce.
However, in 2019, the company shifted its focus back to the importation of medicinal cannabis. It announced that it was going to acquire a company named the Greenbelt Company. The Greenbelt company was given the go-ahead by the Sierra Leone government to grow, process, and export cannabis on 4,000 acres of farmland.
However, the deal fell through after the Sierra Leone government no longer pursued the legislation for cannabis in the country. Cleverly stepped down as chair, and the firm’s shares were suspended.
Kamari/KamaPay Crypto
Chris Cleverly later established Kamari, a blockchain-based financial platform that is at the same time a payment system, a wallet, and a “lottery” in 2021.
In an interview in a blog, Chris Cleverly stated: “The main onboarding model is to use lottery tokens. There’s nothing else that can get people to sign up to something like lotteries can, and a lottery is a powerful engagement channel.”
As we also noted earlier, Tingo Ghana has not been registered with most of the regulators including Bank of Ghana, the National Telecoms Authority, and Ghana Data Protection Commission (DPC).
Hindenburg Research described the Kamari crypto as a shitcoin (definition: A shitcoin is a cryptocurrency with zero or close to zero value and no utility) and noted that the project initially spiked to around $7 and subsequently plummeted to $0.0038.
Its price at the time of publication is currently at $0.200030.
The Tingo Case
Cleverly is now the president of Tingo, Inc, the Nigeria-based agri-fintech company, and of Tingo International Holdings, an investment company.
As reported in the story we posted, there was an investigation by Hindenburg that showed numerous red flags including fraud allegations, inflation of revenue numbers, and more.
As we also noted earlier, Tingo Ghana has not been registered with most of the regulators including Bank of Ghana, the National Telecoms Authority, and Ghana Data Protection Commission (DPC).
We had a source who states that DPC issued a summons to the company for its non-registration with the commission.
Our source also stated that the company was officially registered with the Registrar General Department by local Ghanaians who were promised compensation upon official operation by the company.
However, our source indicates that the company failed to fulfill its end of the bargain even after the company officially launched in Ghana.
As of today, Tingo Group International does not have any stake in Tingo Mobile Ghana Ltd until the due process is done and due changes are effected at the Registrar General’s Department.
More Tingo Red Flags
More and more red flags are being raised on Tingo and some of its associates. According to the Financial Times (FT), Tingo released a press release a couple of months ago announcing a “multi-billion-dollar pipeline” of commodities exports going through Dubai.
The FT team visited Tingo’s Dubai branch and found its office vacant. A neighbor stated a few people occasionally came into the premises but no one had been seen for several days.
Where Are We Now?
Currently, lots of questions are being asked about Tingo Inc. The CEO has refuted the allegations made by Hindenburg’s research and has appointed an independent investigator to review and report to its independent directors concerning allegations contained in the report.
DataPro Limited, a Nigerian credit rating agency has suspended Tingo Mobile’s credit rating. The decision came as a result of the company’s alleged failure to provide the necessary additional information required to sustain its assigned rating.
Tingo has lost 80% of its value after Hindenburg’s report.
None of the local Ghanaian authorities has issued a public statement on Tingo Mobile Ghana.
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