Meet Aisha Huang's Cousin; The Rosewood Smuggling 'Queen', Helena Huang

Helen Huang when she was arrested in 2019

Illegal small-scale mining ('galamsey) 'queen', Aisha Huang, made news headlines in the country following her re-arrest in Ghana after being deported in 2018 for engaging in 'galamsey' activities.

Many Ghanaians have berated the government for not prosecuting Aisha Huang when she was arrested in 2017 but rather deporting her in 2018 with the excuse that jailing her would affect Ghana's relationship with the Chinese government.

But Aisha Huang's deportation was not the first time Akufo-Addo's government had deported a Chinese criminal gang leader without trial. In 2019, the government deported the leader of a Rosewood smuggling gang, Helen Huang, popularly known as the 'Rosewood queen', without trial.

Aisha Huang and Helena Huang are said to be cousins, according to a number of reports including one by Onuafmonline.com, and the two seem to share a common goal of destroying Ghana's land and water bodies while stealing the country's natural resources.

The Northern Regional Police Command of the Ghana Police Service arrested Helena Huang for illegally transporting Rosewood from the region in 2019.

After her initial arrest in May 2019, Helena Huang jumped bail for over six weeks before being re-arrested. Her case, however, was not prosecuted, and she was handed over to the Ghana Immigration Service.

According to the Daily Graphic, a notice signed by the Controller General of the Ghana Immigration Service said the Chinese national was informed that "her permit to remain in Ghana has been revoked." The paper also noted that the 43-year-old was deported on June 26.

In a TV3 interview monitored by Ghanaweb, Director of the Faculty of Academic Affairs and Research at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC), Professor Emmanuel Kwesi Aning, indicated that the actions of Helena Huang had caused Ghana millions of Ghana cedis.

"We are now talking about Aisha Huang, but that is only one part of the puzzle that, as Ghanaians, we need to unravel. When we take Rosewood since 2012, over 540,000 tons of Rosewood, equivalent to 23,474 20-foot containers or approximately 6 million trees, were illegally harvested and imported into China from Ghana while bans on harvest and trade were in place.

"The Chinese person who was involved is called either Huang Yan Feng but also known as Helena Huang characterized as the queen of Rosewood," he said.

•ghanaweb.com