Ghana’s main opposition party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has expressed fury following a High Court ruling that sentenced its influential Ashanti Regional Chairperson, Bernard Antwi Boasiako, to 20 years in prison with hard labour for illegal mining offences.<\/p>\n
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Popularly known as “Chairman Wontumi”, Boasiako was convicted in Accra on counts of assigning mineral rights without required ministerial approval and purposely facilitating unlicensed mining operations on his company’s concession in Samreboi, Western Region. The court also fined Boasiako and his firm, Akonta Mining Company Limited, over $10 000.<\/p>\n
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Boasiako, who denied all charges, becomes the most prominent political figure convicted since state enforcement drives on illegal small-scale mining, locally termed galamsey, were intensified.<\/p>\n
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NPP General Secretary Justin Kodua Frimpong rejected the verdict, claiming the trial was politically motivated and alleging that the court ignored crucial evidence that exonerated Boasiako.<\/p>\n
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“The fight against illegal mining cannot become credible only when it targets political opponents in respect of whom evidence of wrongdoing does not exist,” Frimpong stated outside the court.<\/p>\n
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Ghana remains Africa’s top gold producer, but years of unregulated galamsey have severely polluted major water bodies and destroyed vast swathes of forest reserves. While environmental advocacy groups hailed the 20-year custodial sentence as a major breakthrough against sector “kingpins,” the NPP’s legal team has confirmed plans to appeal the conviction.<\/p>\n
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–ChannelAfrica–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":16268,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-40181","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Ghana opposition decries 20-year illegal mining sentence for top official","published_date":"2026-07-21 15:25:38","news_description":"Ghana opposition decries 20-year illegal mining sentence for top official","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/40181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/40181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40182,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/40181\/revisions\/40182"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=40181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}