[2] Joshua Kwabena Siaw was born in Obomeng, a small town in the Eastern Region of Ghana, in January 1923.
J. K. Siaw worked with his father on a cocoa farm before attending school, aged 12, in 1935, and he took to basket-making as a way to make more money to further his own education.
After a couple of months he went to work at the Orthodox Mission School and then to the Bremang Gold Dredging Company near Bogoso, in Ghana's Western Region.
[5] The approval was given to "Tata Trading Company" to establish a brewery in Cape Coast in the Central Region, Ghana, "a place of fashion, scholarship, and beauty".
The new National Redemption Council (NRC) government attempted to renegotiate the competing interests of the state, local businessmen, workers, and foreign capital.
It was officially opened by the then Head of State Colonel Ignatius Kutu Acheampong, who said of the event: "It is the single-minded and single-handed effort of Mr. J. K. Siaw... which has been responsible for what we see around us today.
Tata Company secured exclusive export rights for the "Maltex" drink to neighbouring Togo, Dahomey (Benin), Upper Volta (Burkina Faso), Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Senegal, and The Gambia from Albani Breweries Limited, a Danish firm operating in Ghana.
"[6] August 25, 1977 J.K Siaw formed The Modern Continental Bank together with Mr Kwadwo Ohene-Ampofo a legal practitioner.
[3] See Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, Ghana Siaw was among the businessmen targeted by the AFRC[11] under the "house cleaning" exercise against corruption.
[6] The AFRC were under the impression that Ghana's wealthiest businessmen, of whom J. K. Siaw was the most prominent, must have acquired their wealth through corruption facilitated by the country's former leaders, including Lt. Gen. Akwasi Afrifa, Gen. Acheampong and Lt. Gen. Fred Akuffo, who were all executed.
During the short time that the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council was the government of Ghana (4 June 1979 until 24 September 1979), Siaw was arrested on numerous occasions, and his house looted.
The NIC "found that the confiscation of all the assets of J. K. Siaw, owner of the former Tata Brewery, on the grounds that he engaged in over-invoicing and under-invoicing during the Acheampong period was a travesty of justice".
He had sent numerous petitions to the military government PNDC and had applied for safe entry to be allowed back into Ghana without risk of arrest.