We Aren’t Interested in Prosecuting Foreigners Engaged in Galamsey, Fraud- Interior Minister

The Minister for Interior, Muntaka Mubarak says the government of Ghana has no interest in putting foreign nationals arrested for illegal mining and cybercrimes before a law court in the country to face the full rigours of the law.

Rather, the focus is to deport such culprits and ban them from returning to the country.

During an engagement with the Ashanti Regional Police Command on April 4, the Minister said among the dominant crimes for which foreigners are arrested in the country are illegal mining, logging and cybercrimes.

“The Chinese and some other citizens we found, the kind of activities they were involved was purely defrauding citizens around the world using a system set up that was so sophisticated but many of them are into our forest, many of them are cutting our trees unlawfully. Others are involved in galamsey activities and many other crimes.”

The Asawase MP said deporting foreign criminals was a new policy the Interior Ministry under his leadership had introduced.

“We have resolved as a new policy that for two things- whether in our forests for galamsey or citing our trees unlawfully and fraud- when we arrest you, we are not interested in prosecuting you. Our first option is to send you back to your country and this is something we are very serious about.”

Already, he said, his office had written to the office of the Attorney-General about the policy and the police to take note.

“I have written to the Attorney-General, we are not interested in prosecuting people who are destroying our environment and who are defrauding people. We will take them back to their country and put them on the stop list never for them to come back.”

This has been widely criticized on social media.

Some Ghanaians believe this will derail the fight against illegal mining by the government which has already been criticized as ineffective and devoid of commitment.

Source: opemsuo.com/Hajara Fuseini