Former Chief of Staff’s son, Amewu’s brother, others hold concessions on ravaged riverbanks despite Akufo-Addo’s ban

Companies owned by individuals with political connections and some entrepreneurs have concessions near heavily mined riverbanks despite former President Akufo-Addo’s directives that mining companies maintain a 100-meter distance from water bodies.

The Fourth Estate’s investigations show that these companies lack permits from regulatory authorities including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Water Resources Commission. Yet, destructive mining activities have been carried out on their concessions, severely affecting the Tano and Ankobra rivers.

Among the companies with mining leases that affect water bodies, two—Cape North Limited and Tera Nayo Limited— stand out because of their links to the son of the third most powerful person in the Jubilee House during the Akufo-Addo administration –the Chief of Staff, Frema Osei Opare.

The Minerals Commission database shows that the two companies have two active mining leases that are valid for ten years.

The former Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Samuel Abu Jinapor, granted the leases for the two companies on March 15, 2023.

The two companies’ leases are part of several others that Mr Jinapor approved that straddle rivers, contradicting his own directives and environmental regulations which stipulate that there should be no mining within 100 metres of any river or water body.

Portions of Cape North Limited’s concession overlap the Ankobra River. The Ankobra River is rich in minerals, especially gold, which has led to mining activities within and around its banks. Some of these activities, including illegal mining, have contributed to its pollution.  

Tera Nayo’s concession also stretches across two water bodies, the Tano River and the Amumeri Stream.

The Tano River originates in the Ahafo Region and empties into the Aby Lagoon and the Atlantic Ocean near the Ghana-Côte d’Ivoire border. The river is essential for both agricultural production and local livelihoods, providing water for irrigation, fishing, and other uses.

The Fourth Estate’s searches at the Office of the Registrar of Companies (ORC) indicated that Cape North and Tera Nayo are both owned by one man – Nana Osei Opare, who is a co-director with Maataa Opare.

Nana Osei and Maata are both children of Akosua Frema Osei-Opare, President Akufo-Addo’s Chief of Staff for eight years.

Satellite imagery shows that Cape North’s concession has been heavily mined in a way that affects the ecology of the Ankobra River.

The situation on the banks of the Tano where Tera Nayo’s concession is located is no different.

Nana Osei-Opare owns two other mining companies, Optec Limited and Mech Resources Limited. His sister, Maataa Opare, and another person, Nana Yaa Serwaa Opare, serve as co-directors with him in the companies.

Optec Limited is an offshoot of an information technology company where Mr Osei-Opare is the CEO/Founder and Maata Opare is the legal manager.

Together, their four companies, have applied for 23 mining and prospecting licenses. Five leases have been granted from these applications.

Three of these companies have Francis Owusu-Akyaw, the MP for Juaben in the Ashanti Region, as their consultant. Mr. Akyaw alone has provided consultancy services for at least 18 companies, all of them mining in forest reserves or near water bodies.

A former Chief Executive of the Minerals Commission, Tony Aubyn, tells The Fourth Estate that when mining concessions are granted across water bodies “it means you can mine in the river itself.”

“I know that in my time some applications were rejected because they straddled a major river,” Mr Aubyn says.

“The one that I am recalling was on the Pra River. The demarcation was across the Pra River, so we declined it and then we asked the applicant if he is so minded, he could have two concessions, one at the east side and one at the west side,” He adds.

Under the regulations of LI 2173 and environmental standards set by the EPA, mining activities are generally restricted near water bodies. The Minerals Commission and Water Resources Commission require a buffer distance of at least 100 meters from major rivers and other water bodies to protect natural resources and prevent pollution.

Apart from Mr Osei-Opare’s two companies, other companies have mining concessions that cut across major rivers whose banks have been decimated by mining.

For example, Zogok Gold and Construction Limited is a mining company with a concession that stretches across the Ankobra River. There is extensive damage along the banks of the river that runs through the concession. This company has two beneficial owners—Thomas Amewu-Duglu, the General Manager of Volta Forest Products.  Mr. Amewu-Deglu is the brother of the former minister of Railways Development, John-Peter Amewu, who was Lands and Natural Resources Minister from January 2017 to August 2018. Multiple media reports described Mr Amewu-Duglu’s partner, Victor Gadri, as a businessman, small-scale miner, and philanthropist.

Zogok Gold and Construction Limited applied for the concession in September 2023 and was given the green light to mine from November 1, 2024, for 30 years.

In addition to this concession located at Dompim in the Western Region, Zogok also has another active mining lease in the Western Region which was granted in 2021 for mining for 12 years. The company applied for this concession in 2015, but it was only approved days after Lands and Natural Resources Minister, Samuel Abu Jinapor, visited Hohoe in the Volta Region on December 13, 2021. Coincidentally, he visited the VFP, where Mr Amewu-Duglu was a General Manager. Ten days later, the company was issued a mining lease.  

Another mining company, Berksgold, incorporated in February 2019, has a small-scale mining concession near Manso Nkwanta in the Ashanti Region. The company’s five-year mining lease was granted in July 2022.

Three other companies, K. Kukom Ventures, White Pearl Enterprise Limited, and Open Job have also been granted mining licenses extending across water bodies in areas heavily devastated by illegal mining.

Section 18 of the Minerals and Mining Act stipulates that before a company undertakes a mining activity, it “shall obtain the necessary approvals and permits from the Forestry Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency for the protection of natural resources, public health, and the environment.”

However, data obtained from the EPA shows that none of the companies mentioned in this story has an environmental permit to either prospect or mine for precious minerals in Ghana.

The Minerals Commission has refused to respond to The Fourth Estate’s request for information on mining operating permits it has issued from 2020-2024.

Companies’ responses

In an interview with The Fourth Estate, Nana Osei-Opare, the former Chief of Staff’s son, distanced himself from the extensive mining operations on his companies’ concessions. He blames it all on illegal miners and insists he does not know what is going on. He claims forcefully that the issue has been reported to the relevant authorities.

“It first came to our notice in maybe 2020 and we’ve been fighting,” he insists. “We have written to the Minerals Commission, Operation Galamstop [a joint police-military operation to fight illegal mining], the police. It just can’t be contained,” he claims.  

Mr Osei-Opare says his companies don’t own a single excavator or chanfang— a crude piece of Chinese machinery used for mining on water bodies—nor have they ever rented one.

“Any machine there can be burnt,” he said, insisting that “we stayed away from that game [galamsey] because that is not a game we want to play,” he insists.

He provided a copy of a letter one of his companies, Tera Nayo Limited, sent to the Minerals Commission in 2021 complaining about how illegal miners had taken over his company’s concession. However, he did not provide any evidence of a similar complaint about Cape North’s concession, the most ravaged among his companies’ concessions.

Mr Osei-Opare says none of his four companies has started mining yet, claiming that Cape North and Tera Nayo will start mining in November 2025. He says they have both been undertaking exploration activities. 

Although he  tells The Fourth Estate that his companies have “concluded” their exploration activities, they are yet to obtain permits from the EPA.

When asked why they do not have EPA permits, he said obtaining permits for exploration “depends on what type of exploration” a company is engaged in.

“We are not drilling,” he says, claiming his companies are only engaged in soil sampling. “You don’t need an EPA permit [for that]. From what the [geologists] have informed me, you don’t necessarily need that. What you need the EPA for, is for drilling.”

Mr Amewu-Duglu, a director of Zogok Gold and Construction insists in an interview with The Fourth Estate that he does not know about any gold mining concessions as the company had been dormant for a while.

“I know the company exists but I don’t know about any gold mining work you’re talking about,” he says.

He directed The Fourth Estate to Mr Victor Gadri, who is also listed as a director and beneficial owner of the company.

When we asked Mr Gadri if the company had all the regulatory permits, his response was “I have all my permits.”

He claims his detractors have given The Fourth Estate false information about him.

Although the river bank on his concession appeared damaged, he insists he had nothing to do with it. 

Mr Gadri says the company was only drilling and not mining and those  parts of the concession were damaged before the company’s mining lease was granted.

When The Fourth Estate pointed to him that Mr Amewu-Duglu is one of the directors and beneficial owners of the company, his response was: “Are you sure? You’re getting everything wrong.”

“When you registered the company at the Registrar General, which names did you use as directors and beneficial owners” we asked him.

“He is not part of it,” he responded.

“His name is there. How is he not part of it?”

“Zogok is not for only gold. We do construction, oil, and other things. Maybe his name is in another business.”

Mr. Gadri subsequently requested an interview in his office the next day, only to say he was “in a meeting in town and would call later” when we called him at the scheduled time. He is yet to return our call.

The former Minister of Lands and Natural Resources did not respond to The Fourth Estate’s request for an interview.

You must report – WACAM

Kwaku Afari, the Technical Director of WACAM, an environmental NGO, rejects Mr Osei-Opare’s claim that he is not responsible for the active mining on his concession. He noted that once a company acquires a mining lease and fulfills all its financial obligations to land owners, it becomes the responsibility of the company to protect its concessions. He says when there is evidence of mining on a concession of a company that has been granted a prospecting lease, then the company has broken the law.

“A prospecting [license] is not a mining lease where you should find big holes being dug,” he explains.

Mr Afari says it is inexcusable for a company to say it is not responsible for mining activity on its concessions.

The onus lies on you to report to the necessary authorities, which is the Minerals Commission and the security agencies. [If] there are illegal operators on your land, you are supposed to act,” he says.  “You are also supposed to protect your concession. Whatever property that you have, by law, if you look at Article 18 [of the Constitution] everyone has the right to protect his property.”

He says it is even more important “if your property or whatever is due you is being used to perpetrate illegality and you more or less are silent on it, then that means it is either you are benefiting to some extent or you think it is of some importance to you.”

He points to the need for adherence with Section 17 of the Minerals and Mining Act which requires mining leaseholders to obtain a permit from the Water Resources Commission as a pre-requisite for diverting, impounding, conveying, and using water from a river, stream, underground reservoir, or watercourse.

The EPA’s Mining Director, Mr Sandow Ali, agrees. He tells The Fourth Estate that at any stage of exploration, a company needs an EPA permit. He mentions four permits that a company must have: a license from the minister, an EPA permit, an operating permit from the Minerals Commission, and a water use permit from the Water Resources Commission.

“Just the license alone does not give you the permission to go and start working. If you pick the license alone and start working, it is illegal,” he says.

None of the four companies owned by Mr OseiOpare were on the list of companies that have obtained water use permits.

But Mr Ali emphasizes that “for exploration, you use a lot of water, so you need a water use permit from the Water Resources Commission.”

The Minerals Commission’s Chief Executive, Martin Ayisi, insists in an interview that the fact that a company has been granted a concession across a water body does not mean that it is allowed to mine in the water body.

He did not respond to The Fourth Estate’s subsequent questions on the specific cases found. He failed to pick up calls and did not respond to an email, although he requested the specific cases. He did not respond to a letter delivered to his office as well as WhatsApp and text messages.

A Rocha Ghana, an environmental conservation organization, has criticised the government for giving out mining concessions that straddle water bodies even after it had banned mining close to these areas.

“The Minerals Commission has given out several licenses in 2022 and 2023 that straddle critical water bodies, including at the exact locations already decimated by galamsey,” the Operations Director of A Rocha Ghana, Daryl Bosu, tells The Fourth Estate.

“It is incomprehensible why the Minerals Commission is issuing licenses alongside and across rivers when the devastation of mining is now so clear. That these licenses are for precise locations already decimated by galamsey is even more disturbing.  

The communities are suffering greatly from the pollution of their water sources and farmlands, which is already affecting their health, including kidney problems. Mining leases across and adjacent to rivers do not meet the President’s red zone directive.”

During the 2022 State of the Nation Address, President Akufo-Addo reiterated the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources’ declaration of water bodies as a no-go area for mining.

In an interview with The Fourth Estate, the Director of Operations at the EPA, Mr Ransford Sekyi, insists that although some concessions have rivers and streams in them, such water bodies are protected. However, coordinates provided by the Minerals Commission covering concessions along the water bodies do not show compliance with the regulations.

Let’s get it clear. There’s no doubt that there are streams or rivers within concessions. There are, but there is no stream that is being mined or a river [that is being mined] like that,” he says.   

Mr Sekyi, however, concedes that “as a matter of caution, it’s better not to award mining concessions that straddle river bodies.”

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