By Emmanuel Nduka Obisue
The High Court in Accra has sentenced Bernard Antwi Boasiako, popularly known as Chairman Wontumi and the Ashanti Regional Chairman of Ghana’s opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), to 20 years’ imprisonment after finding him guilty in the Akonta Mining illegal mining case.
Justice Audrey Kocuvie-Tay handed Wontumi two separate 20-year prison terms after convicting him on two counts. The court ordered that both sentences run concurrently. In addition, Wontumi was fined 10,000 penalty units on each count.
Akonta Mining Limited, the company at the centre of the case, was also convicted on two counts and fined 15,000 penalty units for each offence.
Delivering judgment, Justice Kocuvie-Tay held that the prosecution had proved its case beyond reasonable doubt, finding Wontumi guilty of unlawfully assigning mineral rights without the required approval of the Minister responsible for mining, as well as deliberately facilitating illegal mining activities.
The court also rejected a last-minute application by the defence seeking to halt the judgment and refer constitutional issues to Ghana’s Supreme Court. The judge ruled that there was no genuine uncertainty in the relevant provisions of the Minerals and Mining Act to warrant such a referral.
In a significant aspect of the ruling, the court lifted Akonta Mining’s corporate veil, holding that the company lacked a functional board and that Wontumi exercised effective control over its operations. The judge ruled that this made him personally liable for offences committed through the company.
The convictions were secured under Ghana’s Minerals and Mining Act, 2006 (Act 703), as amended in 2020, which introduced stiffer penalties for illegal mining-related offences in the country’s ongoing fight against “galamsey”—the local term for illegal mining.
The judgment marks one of the most high-profile convictions linked to Ghana’s crackdown on illegal mining, a practice that has caused widespread environmental degradation and pollution of rivers and forests across the country.
