Ghanaian legal scholar and governance advocate, Professor Stephen Kwaku Asare, popularly known as Kwaku Azar, has called for a decisive and aggressive approach to combat illegal mining (galamsey) in Ghana.
In a post on his Facebook page on Sunday, October 12, 2025, Professor Azar who described the financiers behind the galamsey menace as ‘economic terrorists’ fueling an ecocide, outlined a 10-point plan to tackle the environmental devastation caused by galamsey, urging authorities to target the financiers and supply chains fueling the illegal trade.
Professor Azar criticised the current approach to galamsey as inadequate, noting that arrests and prosecutions often target small-scale miners while financiers receive “elite treatment.”
He proposed “Operation Mercury – Ghana,” a military-civilian operation to disrupt supply chains, including mercury, fuel, excavators, and cash, while occupying mining sites to prevent their reuse.
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Drawing inspiration from Peru’s Operation Mercury, which reduced deforestation by over 90%, he emphasised the need to hold financiers accountable.
Among his recommendations, Professor Azar urged Parliament to enact a Domestic Ecocide Law to criminalise organised environmental destruction, strengthen anti-money-laundering measures, and introduce Unexplained Wealth Orders to seize assets.
He also called for specialised Ecocide Courts to fast-track trials within 90 days, strict bail terms pegged to environmental damage, and automatic asset forfeiture to fund restoration efforts.
Other proposals include enhanced financial investigations, public shaming of convicted financiers, redirecting seized assets to train youth in sustainable industries, and barring financiers from politics.
Professor Azar advocated for long custodial sentences, up to life imprisonment without pardon, for those orchestrating large-scale environmental destruction.
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Describing galamsey as a war on Ghana’s rivers, soil, and people, Professor Azar stressed that the fight requires extraordinary measures grounded in national security, public interest, and anti-money-laundering precedents.
“We cannot fight galamsey using the Queensberry rules,” he wrote.
Read his full post including proposed measures below:
We are fighting galamsey like it is an ordinary crime. We go to the sites, arrest a few people, parade them, arraign them, then there’s bail, and the case joins the traffic-choked highway of justice.
As for the financiers, we hardly touch them. And if we do, they get elite treatment.
But the financiers of galamsey are not merely breaking mining laws; they are committing ecocide — the deliberate destruction of the natural foundations of life. Every ounce of illegal gold costs a river its soul, a child their health, and a community its future.
They are economic terrorists whose greed destroys water security, food security, and moral security all at once. They control the supply lines — fuel, mercury, excavators, chamfan, and cash.
Galamsey financiers have declared war on our rivers, our soil, and our people. They have sown the wind and they must reap the whirlwind. We must meet them boot for boot.
We cannot fight galamsey using the Queensberry rules. We must define the terms of engagement to ensure that we defeat them decisively.
Here are the Top Ten Ways to Win the War on Ecocide
1. Launch “Operation Mercury – Ghana”
This should be a coordinated military-civilian operation targeting illegal-mining supply chains. Go after the mercury, fuel, excavators, chamfan, and cash.
The military must not merely seize equipment and arrest miners; they must occupy the sites to ensure they do not return.
Peru’s Operation Mercury cut deforestation by over 90 percent. We can do the same if we go after the financiers, reclaim, remediate and occupy the sites.
2. Under Certificate of Urgency, Parliament must
• Enact a Domestic Ecocide Law criminalising organised environmental destruction and holding financiers and enablers liable as principals.
• Strengthen the Anti-Money-Laundering Act (Act 1044, 2020) to require banks and other institutions to report suspicious mining-linked transactions.
• Introduce Unexplained Wealth Orders (UWO) to allow assets forfeitures for those who can’t explain their sudden wealth.
• Expand forfeiture powers to seize properties tied to illegal mining and direct proceeds to restoration.
• Criminalise mercury trafficking, regulate and monitor excavator licensing, and ban the manufacture or import of chamfans, water pumps, — with strict cross-border enforcement at ports and borders.
•Impose targeted sanctions and travel bans on suspected financiers; freeze their accounts, and require them to demonstrate that their assets were lawfully acquired, failing which they shall be presumed proceeds of illegal mining.
• Protect whistle-blowers and witnesses, and use civil litigation to recover stolen environmental wealth.
3. Create Ecocide Courts
These are special environmental divisions of the High Court dedicated solely to galamsey and ecological crimes. They will not tolerate frivolous adjournments, endless interlocutory motions, or delay tactics masquerading as due process.
Trials must conclude within 90 days because justice delayed is impunity rewarded. Speedy trials are inherent in justice itself, not an exception to it.
4. Enforce Strict Bail Terms
No routine bail for financiers.
If granted, bail must equal the full value of the environmental damage alleged to have been caused.
5. Automatic Asset Forfeiture
Freeze accounts and seize assets from the moment credible suspicion arises.
The law must move as swiftly as the excavators. After conviction, the proceeds shall flow directly into a National River and Forest Restoration Fund, turning the spoils of destruction into the seeds of renewal.
6. Fast-Track Financial Investigations
Empower the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) and EOCO to trace money flows in real time. Treat unexplained wealth in mining zones as a red flag for immediate audit and prosecution.
7. Name, Shame, and Debar
Publish the names of convicted financiers and their companies. Debar them from government contracts, corporate boards, and political donations for life.
8. Redirect the Youth
Convert seized assets into training and jobs in reclamation, sustainable agriculture, and green industries. For instance, seized excavators can be repurposed for national development and the youth trained to operate them for road construction, reclamation, and public-works projects that build rather than destroy.
Let those who destroyed the land finance its recovery.
9. Ban Financiers from Politics
Bar convicted financiers, and their political patrons, from funding, contesting, or holding public office.
Those who profit from poisoned rivers or protect those who do have already corrupted the public trust; they cannot be trusted to hold it. A democracy financed by poisoned rivers cannot endure.
10. Enhanced Sentencing
Impose long custodial sentences, up to life without the possibility of pardon, for galamsey financiers and organisers of large-scale environmental destruction.
We must use these extraordinary tools grounded on three bases: national security, public interest, and anti-money-laundering precedents, to stop those who treat our rivers and people as expendable profit.
PS: Yɛde post no bɛto hɔ. Yɛnyɛ c
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