Professor Azar’s blunt charge that “those who hid the 2022 docket are as complicit as those who mined without a licence” has refocused attention on the Akonta Mining controversy and exposed fissures in Ghana’s system for policing small-scale and corporate mining. The comments, published by GhanaWeb on October 8, 2025, come amid growing public frustration over alleged selective enforcement and the apparent disappearance of investigative material that could determine whether prosecution is possible.

The Akonta matter began after allegations that the company operated mining activities without a valid licence. Prosecutors opened inquiries in 2022, but those investigations stalled amid revelations that a key docket from that year cannot be located, according to sources familiar with the case. The missing file, which legal experts say would normally contain witness statements, forensic results and chain-of-custody records, is central to establishing whether evidence was properly collected and whether criminal charges can be sustained.

“The suppression or misplacement of core investigative records makes it effectively impossible to hold accountable those suspected of illegal extraction,” Professor Azar said in his remarks. He framed the disappearance not as an administrative lapse but as an act with moral and legal equivalence to illegal mining itself, arguing it undermines the rule of law and the state’s ability to secure natural-resource revenues for the public.

The allegation places pressure on several institutions. Civil society activists and opposition lawmakers are calling for an independent forensic audit of the investigative process and for Parliament’s oversight committees to summon officials from the Minerals Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency and the police’s Criminal Investigations Department to explain gaps in custody and documentation. Government agencies did not provide immediate comment on Professor Azar’s charge when contacted, citing ongoing internal inquiries.

Legal practitioners say missing dockets are a recurrent problem in complex natural-resource cases, where evidence management is often decentralized across multiple agencies. “Successful prosecutions require transparent chains of custody and an accessible evidentiary record,” said a criminal defense lawyer not involved in the case. “Without that, prosecutors face serious hurdles, and public confidence wanes.”

Policy implications are immediate. Observers say the Akonta controversy highlights the need for mandatory digital case management systems, clearer inter-agency protocols for evidence handling, and statutory timelines for the processing of mining-related investigations. Reform advocates argue that strengthening these mechanisms would reduce opportunities for manipulation and ensure cases move from allegation to adjudication without undue delay.

For citizens, the stakes extend beyond one corporate defendant. Ghana’s economy and local communities depend on effective regulation of mineral extraction to protect jobs, revenues and environments. If investigative records can disappear without consequence, critics warn, enforcement becomes a tool of convenience rather than a public good.

As calls for transparency intensify, the coming weeks will test whether institutions can produce the 2022 materials, or whether the absence of the docket will prompt higher-level inquiries and concrete reforms. For now, Professor Azar’s allegation has crystallized a dilemma: accountability depends not only on prosecuting illegal miners but on ensuring that the system that prosecutes operates with unimpeachable integrity.