Former Manso Nkwanta Member of Parliament Joseph Albert Qualm has sued former Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM) Chairman Professor Kwabena Frimpong-Boateng for defamation.
The former legislator is suing the former Minister of Environment, Science, Technology, and Innovation for GH¢2.5 million in damages.
He is also requesting a restraining order to prevent Prof. Frimpong-Boateng from commenting further on the galamsey report he authored.
In the leaked report, Prof. Frimpong-Boateng claimed, among other things, that the former MP used his position as a board member on the Minerals Commission to acquire dozens of mining concessions.
The former alleged that the former MP ended “up selling these concessions to private individuals, including party members for two hundred thousand Cedis per concession. This infuriated the party in the constituency so during the 2020 primaries to select a candidate the electorate voted against Hon. Quarm, the sitting MP, who was more resourced than other candidates. Although there were allegations that he “camped” delegates and attempted to bribe them, he lost to a lesser known individual who did not have any financial muscle.”.
But the former MP has described the assertions as defamatory and wants the court to declare “that the Defendant’s averments in his report which alleged underhand sales of mining concessions to the Plaintiff is capable of a defamatory meaning and are actually defamatory of the Plaintiff.”
He is also seeking an “injunction restraining the Defendant his servants, or agents or otherwise, from further publishing or causing to be published any portion of the Defendant’s report so long as they relate to the allegations made against the Plaintiff; and to further restrain the publication or repetition of the said or similar words defamatory of the Plaintiff through media interviews and other such by the Defendant.
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