Aisha Huang
A senior immigration officer yesterday confirmed to an Accra High Court that ‘Galamsey Queen’ Aisha Huang, illegally re-entered Ghana following her repatriation in December 2018 by the Comptroller-General of Ghana Immigration Service (GIS).
Superintendent of Immigration Divine Ahumah Ocansey, who is the prosecution’s 11th witness in the trial of the Chinese national, also confirmed that the accused was in possession of two separate passports with different names, dates and places of birth when she was arrested.
Led in his evidence-in-chief by the Director of Public Prosecutions, Yvonne Atakora Obuobisa, the witness said investigations revealed that Aisha Huang was repatriated on passport number G395… bearing the name En Huang.
“She was not to re-enter the country until the ban on her was lifted by the Comptroller-General of GIS. The said passport expired on 13th January 2020.”
The witness also told the court that the second passport with number EE99… bearing the name Huang Ruixia issued on January 14, 2019, had no Ghana visa permitting travel to Ghana, “therefore, her entry was illegal.”
“I observed that the edge of the biodata page of passport number EE99… had been cut off while the last page of the passport, page 49, had been slit, meaning that the passport was invalid,” Superintendent of Immigration Ocansey revealed.
Fake Husband
The witness also told the court that investigations also reveled that Aisha Huang used details of a fake husband to acquire an indefinite residence permit in 2017.
“Following the arrest of En Huang, the process leading to her acquisition of the indefinite residence permit was reviewed and it was found that most of the documents supporting her application like the Ghana passport biodata pages of Anthony Fabien and the marriage certificate of her alleged marriage to Anthony Fabien were forged,” he said.
He continued that “the Passport Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Births and Death Registry, Accra, did not have any records on the accused person’s husband, Anthony Fabien.”
Superintendent Ocansey also added that the Zenith Bank account (Kumasi) statement belonging to Anthony Fabien which was used to support the accused person’s indefinite residence permit application was found to be dormant and the said account was opened with the forged Ghanaian passport.
Galamsey Activities
The witness also told the court that their investigations point to the fact that Aisha Huang undertook illegal small-scale mining and her claims that she only rendered mining support service to a Ghanaian by name Aunty Maggie at her concession at Bepotenten was untrue.
“The Immigration Office in Kumasi obtained a statement from Phaston Ahenkan Egyir, the son of Auntie Maggie who stated that the accused mined on their concession in the Amansie Central District and also used the documents of Egyir Company Limited to retrieve her seized excavators in 2016 but failed to pay them for mining on their land.”
He said four Chinese nationals who were working for Aisha Huang on her concession were arrested in 2017 and they confirmed they were working for the accused person.
“My investigation established that the accused person was conducting the mining operations at Bepotenten where the four Chinese males were arrested. The investigation into the mining activities of the accused persons were conducted by investigators from Ghana Police Service,” Superintendent Ocansey added.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak