Aisha Huang dines with top officials – Prof Aning alleges

Director of Faculty of Academic Affairs and Research at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, Professor Kwesi Aning, has asked Attorney General Godfred Dame to expand investigations into the conduct of Aisha Huang to rope in her accomplices.

Speaking on Newsfile, a Joy News programme, on September 10, Prof Aning suggested that punishing Aisha Huang alone will not necessarily solve the controversy which has evolved around the galamsey queenpin.

His comment comes on the back of assurances by the Office of the Attorney General and Minister for Justice that it will prosecute the Chinese national for all her past and present crimes following her rearrest.

“I want to caution the Attorney General or make a suggestion. Punishing Aisha Huang alone does not begin to think about the problem or the extent of the problem. We need to ask ourselves who are those who have colluded with her, connived with her, facilitated her business to the extent that we are even in doubt if she ever left this country,” Prof Aning said.

Further speaking, Prof Aning, alleged that Aisha Huang dined with top officials suggestively prior to her rearrest.

The Director at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre had stated earlier that Aisha Huang was a Chinese state spy with expertise in economic warfare, therefore, the defences mounted for her extradition in 2019 raised serious questions.

“The senior minister’s [Yaw Osafo-Maafo] argument that Aisha Huang was she to be prosecuted could affect the Syno Hydro loan raises particularly difficult questions. I said Aisha Huang had been let off the hook because she was a Chinese state agent. Vladimir Antwi Danso, my senior brother says that she is not intelligent enough to be a state agent. That opens up more disturbing things.

"If she is not that intelligent, what was the senior minister doing facilitating her exit? How has she been able to stay in Kumasi running her shop? And I know about 10 days ago, she was dining with some important people. If that is the hallmark of a woman who is unintelligent then, what is the IQ level of those that we have put our trust in?” Prof Aning asked

The security analyst also expressed concerns about the rate at which state institutions that could have acted on the Aisha Huang case before it escalated seem to have now awoken from their slumber following her arrest.

He wondered if it was intended to cover up their failings on the job they have been entrusted to discharge. Prof Aning on allegations that Aisha Huang got a police commander transferred has asked the Inspector General of Police, Dr. George Akuffo Dampare, to launch investigations into the matter.

“I am also disturbed about the amazing rapidity with which state institutions that had failed to act suddenly claim to be acting. In whose interest? Is it in their selfish interest that they close the gap that exposes them? And I have asked the IGP Dr. Dampare to investigate this assertion that this woman [Aisha Huang] was able to get a Commander transferred. If that is true, then the very edifice of this state, those who are to be protecting us, those that we have entrusted with our lives and the lives of generations yet unborn have failed us and failed us woefully,” he asserted.

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Background

Aisha Huang was recently arrested for engaging in galamsey-related activities. She is reported to have entered the country via the Togo border after her deportation.

She has since been remanded and is set to make a court appearance with three others on September 14.

It will be recalled that Aisha Huang gained notoriety as an illegal mining queenpin in 2017. She was arrested for the same conduct but later deported with the state discontinuing the trial against her.

Justifying why the state had to deport the Chinese national, the Senior Minister, Nana Yaw Osafo-Maafo, addressing a town hall meeting on April 18, 2019, revealed that, "Putting that woman [Aisha Huang] in jail in Ghana is not going to solve your money problem. It is not going to make you happy or me happy."

But President Akufo-Addo in 2019 said the deportation of the Chinese galamsey queenpin was a ‘mistake’.

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