On Monday, July 20, an Accra High Court convicted Chairman Wontumi and his company, Akonta Mining, after finding them guilty of illegal mining offences at his Samreboi concession in the Western Region.
The lead counsel for the Ashanti Regional Chairman petitioned the court to adjourn the judgement against his client, which was slated for Monday, 20 July, citing that he was out of the jurisdiction and would return on 22 July.
In her ruling, however, the presiding judge, Audrey Kocuvie-Tay, noted that both parties had been consulted in determining the date for the judgement; hence, Atta Akyea should have communicated then if he knew he would not be available on the set date.
The Court also dismissed the application for deferment and referral to the Supreme Court of some constitutional questions which the defence sought to have determined by the apex court.
The judge subsequently sentence Chairman Wontumi to twenty years imprisonment.
Chairman Wontumi has been charged with assigning mineral rights without approval from the Minister responsible for mining, and facilitating unlicensed mining operations at Samreboi in the Western Region.
He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Ken Ashigbey told journalists while reacting to this that “I am happy, and I think we also need to commend the Attorney General for seeing this case through, and we also would want to commend the judge who sat on this case for also demonstrating some courage. As we say the commendations, we also need to commend the former Minister for Land and Natural Resources. He was the first one to publicly declare that Akonta Mining was involved in an illegality.”
He added “We remember that in October 2024, the then former President and then candidate for the NDC, the current President, His Excellency John Mahama, had indicated that the fight against Galamsey was going to be fruitless unless we’re able to deal with the campaign. So it is great that we’re dealing with one campaign, but what has happened to the other politically exposed persons who were named in Professor Frimpong Boateng report? What has happened to that? The current Attorney General caused to investigate two people who are currently in this current government. We’ve not heard anything from that.
“You know that several politically exposed persons were involved in Galamsey. They are DCEs, MCEs, demonstrating either complicity or incompetence involved in Galamsey. There was a chief who said, you know, openly in the forum, that about 80 per cent of chiefs are involved in Galamsey. What is happening to all of these chiefs? There are several of them that we can name, that some of them have come into the public space, we’ve heard Otunfor himself made statements like that. We had the former Speaker on the floor of Parliament, talk about the fact that there were some parliamentarians who were either facilitating it, involved in it, and all of that.
“So this is just the beginning. If we really are going to deal with Galamsey decisively, then we need to make sure that a lot of big men who are marauding and parading the corridors of power, flaunting their riches, they are all candidates to also be sentenced. On the issue of the 20 years in jail, I would have wished that a judge would have given the maximum sentence of, you know, 25 years, and also added the maximum fine.”
