Inside Story: Minister Frimpong Boateng’s Mining Empire (Part 2)

The Minister of Science, Technology, Environment and Innovation, Prof. Kwabena Frimpong Boateng, January 21 still retains a 30% interest in Symphony Limited a company that interestingly has five concessions under strange conditions.

Symphony Ltd, a company incorporated in 1990 is authorized to carry on business as general merchants and manufacturer’s representatives, and not mining but has gone beyond to obtain five concessions.

Professor Boateng in January 2014 sold 60,000 shares of the company representing 30% stake to one Yaw Badu. His wife, Agnes Frimpong-Boateng, also on the same day transferred a total of 80,000 representing 40% of the issued shares to the same Yaw Badu.

Documents in our possession indicate that the company was granted five prospecting licenses in the Gyapekrom area, namely; Nwenem, Asiri, Gyapekrom, Baabiareneha and Adomesu.

On November 14 2014, Prof Frimpong Boateng, in his capacity as Director of Symphony Limited wrote to notify the Minerals Commission that Symphony Limited was shedding three of its five concessions and intended to maintain only Baabiareneha and Adomesu.

Now here is where it all gets interesting and murky- On April 15, 2015 the Commission wrote to accept Symphony’s decision to drop the three prospecting licenses. Under our mining laws, once a license is shed it is free and allotted to any mining company that applies to acquire it on a first come first served basis.

In this particular case however, the three prospecting licenses dropped by Symphony are still being reserved for the company. Not only is there no basis in law for this, but what this means is that because of this, the state is losing revenue of about $250,000 (quarter of a million dollars) being a conservative estimate of payment of annual mineral right fees for the three reserved PLs for the four years commencing 2015 to date.

The annual mineral right fee for the Adomesu and Baabiaraneha licenses are US$18,048 and US$23,968 respectively. As if all this was not egregious enough, the two licenses that Symphony retained both expired in 2017 after Symphony failed to pay the annual mineral right fee on time. Under the Minerals and Mining Licensing Regulations, Symphony is required to pay the annual fee not later than 90 days before the expiration of the mineral right, otherwise the PL could be suspended or terminated.

In October 2017, a letter emanating from the Commission signed on behalf of the CEO notified Symphony that both licenses had expired on March 22, 2017. Under the law therefore the annual renewal fee was due in December 2016! These two licenses should have been forfeited if the law was applied to Symphony as it had been applied to all mining entities.

It should not escape anyone that throughout this period, Prof Frimpong Boateng has been the Minister of Science, Technology, Environment and Innovation and therefore the EPA which overseas and regulates the mining industry in conjunction with the Minerals Commission was under his Ministry. This is clearly one of the most alarming conflict of interest situations engendered by a Minister of State.

Stay tuned for more as a citizen has already prepared a petition to be filed at Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice CHRAJ about the Minister causing financial loss to the state and conflict of interest issues.

More Anon!

Source: Free Press