Renowned former Chairman of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM), Professor Frimpong Boateng, has vehemently denied any involvement or complicity in the illegal mining trade, dismissing the allegations as baseless.
According to the distinguished professor, his innocence was reaffirmed by a comprehensive four-year investigation conducted by the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ).
In an exclusive interview on JoyNews’ PM Express monitored by InsiderGH.com, Professor Frimpong Boateng revealed that he and his son only became persons of interest following the news of some 500 missing excavators.
“This was a subject of investigation by CHRAJ for four years. So from 2019 to March this year, myself and my son were under investigations and the report is there we haven’t done anything wrong and so that is neither here nor there.
“Missing excavators everybody knows that I have not taken any excavator but the figure was put out there by a journalist. There was an interview he said when Amewu was leaving he left 500 excavators so somebody brought out that figure and then they tag it on you, you know, and it is not true,” he stated.
“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 they 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.
“So we took a team around …but when we went round and visited the mining areas, the district assemblies and the police stations, we saw just a little over 200 excavators and these were all carted to Accra because those days we did not have any load holder to carry the excavators because that is crucial when you want to transport the excavators. So that’s what happened.”
