By: Gottlieb Baako
In the wake of the Accra High Court’s landmark judgment handing down a 20-year custodial sentence to Bernard Antwi-Boasiako, popularly known as Chairman Wontumi, state prosecutors and legal representatives have firmly pushed back against the defense’s narrative, asserting that Wontumi was ultimately unravelled by the weight of his own witness statements and courtroom admissions.
Addressing public claims by defence counsel that the conviction was based on mere assumptions rather than concrete evidence, prosecution authorities maintained that the state did not need to invent a case—it simply held the Ashanti Regional NPP Chairman to his own contradictory testimony and caution statements.
Central to the state’s counter-offensive is how Wontumi’s primary defense line—that his arrangement with small-scale miner Henry Okum was strictly for land reclamation and coconut planting—completely collapsed under judicial scrutiny.
Throughout the trial, Wontumi insisted under cross-examination that he never authorized gold extraction, telling the court, “I didn’t give him permission to mine; he came to reclaim the land and plant coconut trees so that when the coconuts mature, we would share”.
However, state attorneys pointed out that Wontumi explicitly admitted permitting Okum onto the exclusive mining concession while simultaneously acknowledging that he provided zero financial capital for any land restoration works.
The court seized directly upon this admission to dismantle the defense, with Justice Audrey Kocuvie-Tay highlighting the inherent impossibility of Wontumi’s claims during her evaluation of the evidence. As noted in the judgment,
“Essential to the believability of PW2’s testimony is the fact that A1 did not give PW2 funds for the reclamation exercise, which A1 admits to allowing PW2 to undertake on his concession. How else did A1 expect PW2 to fund the reclamation exercise?”.
The court observed that expecting an experienced small-scale miner to fund costly land rehabilitation out of pocket, while waiting years for coconut trees to mature to recover his capital, was completely implausible and represented an afterthought designed to disguise illegal mining activities.
State representatives further emphasized that Wontumi’s own written submissions and actions directly facilitated the illegal operations at Samreboi. While Wontumi denied assisting in procuring earth-moving equipment, trial records showed he personally introduced third parties to equipment suppliers to source excavators and even enlisted local security support to safeguard access to the concession.
By admitting to these operational arrangements while failing to produce any evidence of written approval from the Minister for Lands and Natural Resources—a mandatory statutory requirement under Section 14(1) of Act 703—Wontumi effectively conceded the essential elements of the prosecution’s case.
Finally, the state dismissed the defense’s late attempt to halt proceedings through a constitutional referral to the Supreme Court as a stalling tactic. Prosecutors noted that the trial judge rightly rejected the application, ruling that the provisions of the Minerals and Mining Act are straightforward, clear, and fully meet constitutional standards of fair trial.
Additionally, by lifting the corporate veil of Akonta Mining Limited, the court established that Wontumi was the true de facto controller and sole operating mind of the business, meaning he could not hide behind a corporate name to escape personal liability.
The state maintained that Wontumi’s 20-year sentence and the permanent forfeiture of all seized machinery, gold, and cash reflect a direct, lawful consequence of his own unrefuted admissions on the witness stand.
