Andy Kwame Appiah-Kubi, the Member of Parliament for Asante-Akim North Constituency, has challenged Attorney-General (A-G) Godfred Dame’s assertion that it is insufficient to merely claim there is no evidence of officials involved in illegal small-scale mining (galamsey).
He urged the A-G to take further steps to investigate the allegations that government officials are deeply involved in galamsey, given the availability of videos that could assist in the investigations.
“It is inadequate for the Attorney-General to tell us that he doesn’t have evidence when clearly we see the people in pictures and in videos.
You cannot tell us that there has not been a commission of crime when the videos are showing. If we want to track these people, we could track them. So it is not enough for the Attorney-General to tell us there is no evidence when presumably, evidence abounds. The report itself alone should ignite an investigation so that the investigations will expose them,” the MP stated.
His comments were made during a discussion on the Attorney-General’s statement regarding the former Chairman of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM), Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng.
The professor’s report alleged the involvement of government officials and private citizens in galamsey.
The Attorney-General reviewed the report and subsequently provided advice to the Criminal Investigations Department (CID). The advice revealed that individuals named in Prof Frimpong-Boateng’s report denied the allegations against them.
However, efforts to obtain further information from the professor to substantiate the allegations and conduct additional investigations were unsuccessful.
The Attorney-General stated that investigations by the police had not yielded any evidence supporting the allegations and, as a result, the allegations did not provide a basis for criminal charges against the individuals mentioned in the report.
However, Professor Frimpong-Boateng in a yet to be aired interview with TV3 has refuted the Attorney-General’s claim, asserting that he fully cooperated with the CID and that he is not an investigative agent.
Source: ghanaweb.com
