Prof. Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng has said he is not an investigative agent to produce “hard evidence” for the Attorney-General to charge persons implicated in his galamsey report for prosecution.
He says what is available to him is what he provided in his report to the government.
Speaking on TV3’s Hot Issues with Keminni Amanor Sunday, October 22, 2023, the former Minister of Science, Technology, Environment and Innovation said it was left with the A-G to carry out its investigations for the supposed hard evidence it seeks to prosecute those listed in the report.
“What does he mean by hard evidence? I mean as somebody who has written a report what evidence do you expect from me apart from words, documents, videos, pictures?
“I am not an investigative agent, that is not my job. I was a chairman of a committee and I wrote a report, so you [as an Attorney General] have to go round and see whether what I am saying is true or otherwise,” he averred.
The Professor who chaired the dissolved Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM) upon a request by the President through the Chief of Staff (CoS) authored a 36-page report titled “Report on the work of IMCIM so far and the way forward,” to Akosua Osei Frema Opare, the CoS, in March 2021.
The report ostensibly named some persons in government and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) neck-deep into illegal mining also known as ‘galamsey’.
However, the A-G advised the government after the report lying idle for over two years until it got leaked in the media that, the document contained no facts to substantiate the claims it contained.
Prof. Frimpong-Boateng in an initial response had said he wasn’t surprised with the turn of events after both the President and the A-G had already condemned the report publicly before proffering any advice on it.
While commenting on it on Hot Issues, the former Head of the Korle-Bu Cardiothoracic Centre told the Attorney General that: “We have regional Ministers, DCEs, MPs, police personnel, Customs and Forestry Commission personnel scattered across Ghana, are they not seeing these things? If you go there, you’ll get your evidence.”
