Some Chinese women in the business of galamsey have become untouchable because they hold secret recordings of sexual escapades with ‘big men’ in Ghana.
Senior journalist Abdul Malik Kweku Baako revealed this on Joy FM/MultiTV’s news analysis programme, Newsfile, Saturday.
He said these women, about three of them, have video and audio recordings of powerful politicians and security officers.
In fact, they have built a network of influence in high places in the country which they rely on for protection whilst engaging in illegal mining.
Mr. Kweku Baako said these women came to Ghana and were involved in some other business but soon migrated to the business of galamsey.
They collected evidence of their sexual encounters with influential people and in some cases brought in young Chinese women who slept with these men and collected evidence which is now being used to blackmail the locals.
One Asia Huang, popularly known as Aisha, is said to be notorious for her illegal mining activities at Bepotenten in the Ashanti Region.
In August last year, the locals mostly farmers demonstrated because theChinese had taken over their cocoa farms and refused to pay the appropriate compensation.
“We want to drive her away with the demonstration, she has taken over our cocoa farms,” one resident said.
“If you challenge her, she will go in for the police to come and arrest you and pack your things away. She has also done same to her own Chinese people and children have died in the open trenches of Aisha,” another resident told Joy News.
One woman said the family resorted to court in order to get a meagre amount as compensation for her mother’s farm.
The Odikro of Bepotenten, Egya George Anane, where Asia is currently working is equally unhappy.
“She is destroying the land and running over our source of drinking water with her huge equipment,” he said.
Mining exploration company Volta Resources Limited says Aisha has encroached 35 acres of their land and extracted GH¢1.5 million worth of gold.
Despite a ban on illegal mining by Land Minister John Peter Amewu, Aisha’s workers have continued to defy the ban and mine with audacity.
Four of her workers, all of them Chinese, were arrested Friday night.
Hainan Gao, 26, Lu Qi Jun, 39, Gao Jin Cheng, 45, and Zhang Zhi Pen, 23 were arrested Friday night whilst mining at a mine owned by Aisha.
They told immigration officers they were working on her instructions.
Commenting on the arrest, Mr. Kweku Baako said the lady’s audacity is not strange.
She was arrested three times by the previous government and released each time without a charge obviously because influential people intervened.
The journalist said the lady and another, whom he named only as Monica, have connections in the current administration, too.
Mr Baako has promised to release an explosive report on investigations dealing with galamsey soon, in which he cited officers of the Minerals Commission, Ghana Police Service among others.
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