Former Chairman of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM), Professor Frimpong-Boateng has denied allegations that he is involved in illegal mining trade.
According to him, the Centre for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), investigated his role in illegal mining trade for four years and found him innocent after the news of some 500 missing excavators.
“For four years, CHRAJ looked into this topic. My son and I were the subject of an inquiry from 2019 until March of this year, but the report shows that we didn’t violate any laws, so it doesn’t matter” he explained.
He emphasized that everyone is aware that he has nothing to do with the missing excavators, but a journalist made up the number.
To prevent some of the excavators from being transported from the bush where they were operating, he stated that his team had to immobilize them.
“We immobilized the excavators by removing the control board and so maybe a day or a night they’ll be able to remove about 15, 20 excavator control boards and report that they have removed the control boards. A few of them may be able to transport either to the police station or the district assembly where they are but then when you leave, the owners of the excavators will bring other control boards, fix them in and then take them away. And so at some point, we were told that about 750 excavators had been impounded” he added.
He disclosed that they went around again with a team but when “we went around and visited the mining areas, the district assemblies and the police stations, they saw just a little over 200 excavators and these were all carted to Accra because those days there was nothing to have any load holder to carry the excavators because it was key to transporting the excavators.
