Flashback: Sir John deployed 12 state forest guards to his mining company in a forest reserve

When a mining company, Fasoh Multi Services Limited, in the Upper Wassaw Forest Reserve in Bibiabini presented the Forestry Commission with a pick-up truck in 2019, the commission’s then chief executive, Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie, was full of praise for them.

Fasoh Multi Services then requested the Ghana’s forestry regulator to assist the company with guards to monitor and protect its mining concession in the Upper Wassaw Forest Reserve.

In his will, one of the controversial lands he owned at the Achimota Forest is held in the name of the company.

Meanwhile, the government has stated that Sir John’s will shall not get the Achimota Forest and Ramsar site lands included in the will.

Barely 24 hours following The Fourth Estate‘s publication, the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, in a statement on May 24, 2022, stated that its checks at the Lands Commission “show no record of ownership of lands, at the Achimota Forest or the Sakumono Ramsar Site, by the late Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie.”

That has been the case in all the Achimota Forest lands he named in his will.

“That said, given the totality of the circumstances of the said allegations, I, as Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, have directed the Lands and Forestry Commissions to deem any ownership of lands, both, in the Achimota Forest and the Sakumono Ramsar Site by the late Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie as void and are to take the appropriate actions accordingly,” the statement said.