Media Without Borders has formally requested some information from the Ministry of the Interior concerning the 21 bars of refined gold confiscated from Earl International Group (Ghana) Gold Limited on Tuesday, 1 June 2021, at the Kotoka International Airport, Accra.
The letter is addressed to the Minister for the Interior, Mohammed Mubarak Muntaka, who also oversees Ghana’s national security operations.
This media asks the ministry two questions in that letter on behalf of the people of Ghana: the whereabouts of the 21 gold bars and whether the company was charged with any offence.
It also indicates in that letter plans to seek the intervention of the Right to Information (RTI) Commission should the ministry decline to provide the information sought in due course.
Background
Charles Taleog Ndanbon, a Ghanaian-born mining entrepreneur, whispered the tipoff that led the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB) to arrest three employees of the Chinese company with the gold bricks at the airport.
The gold bars, valued at about $6 million and said to weigh 83kg, were reportedly obtained from Ndanbon’s concession in Talensi, a district in the Upper East region, by the company with a suspected plan to smuggle them to China through Dubai.
But the company, formerly known as Shaanxi Mining Ghana Limited, claimed the bars were only transported from Talensi to Accra for sale to sustain its operations.
The NIB conducted a post-arrest investigation into the development and forwarded a report on the matter to the Ministry of National Security.
When Ndanbon’s lawyers demanded answers from the NIB concerning the location of the gold bars, the bureau replied that the investigation had been completed and a report had been submitted to the National Security.
But subsequent requests made by some journalists and the lawyers for information on the whereabouts of the seized gold bars yielded no results from the National Security under the previous government.
The Chinese company did not give a clear answer, either, when the author of this company asked its public relations unit on Monday, 26 May 2025, where the gold bars ended up.
Source: Edward Adeti/Media Without Borders/mwbonline.org/Ghana
This is a good start. We believe President Mahama’s led government would pursue this matter as part of his anti-corruption campaign which forms part of his reset agenda.