The former Minister for Environment, Science, Technology, and Innovation, Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng, has come under fire for claims made against him in a report dated March 2021 from Mr. Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, a senior member of Ghana's ruling New Patriotic Party.
Throughout the study, which was centered on illicit mining, or galamsey, throughout the nation, Otchere-Darko was charged with interfering with the work of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illicit Mining (IMCIM).
Mr. Otchere-Darko, a private attorney, voiced his disagreement with the former minister's report and its claims during a radio appearance with Citi FM.
According to the story, he was defending a business that had been accused of indulging in galamsey during the height of the fight against illicit mining.
According to the report, Prof. Frimpong-Boateng informed President Akufo-Addo about Otchere-Darko's actions, and he pledged to take appropriate action.
Otchere-Darko questioned why, if the previous minister thought Otchere-Darko had acted unlawfully, he had not taken the right steps.
He continued by claiming that he had not seen any evidence in the report to support the claim that he had tried to silence Frimpong-Boateng. He then requested that the former minister precisely point out the particular instances in which he had erred and impeded the committee's work.
It demonstrates how little the [previous] minister understood about his job. Why didn't he respond appropriately if what I did was unlawful? As if he were a teacher and the president was a student, he claimed to have reported me to the president.
Mr. Otchere-Darko claimed that the basis for his involvement was the legitimacy of the measures taken by his clients and the alleged illegal actions taken by the state against a business that had been granted permissions and licenses to operate.
He exhorted Frimpong-Boateng to speak out and reveal whether he had received orders to carry out any criminal actions. Otchere-Darko emphasized that he was acting as a legitimate attorney on behalf of a client with a good case, not interfering.
"Let the [former] Minister come and say that when I phoned him, I told him to do something that was wrong; let him come and say that when I called him, I was pressing an unjustified argument; let him come and say so." I predicated my intervention on my clients' actions being legal, as well as what I perceived to be an unlawful state action against a corporation to whom the same state had granted permissions and licenses to conduct business. Mr. Otchere Darko said, "If he has his own issues, let him deal with them, but he should not misinterpret a lawyer's rightful action on behalf of a client who had a rightful case as a matter of interference."
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