Spanish Energy Company, ISOFOTON SA has vowed to flout a ruling made by Ghana�s highest court, the Supreme Court, ordering it to refund about $400,000 paid to it as judgement debt in 2011, saying they will not pay the money because government owes them 1.3 million dollars.
The Supreme Court, on Friday ordered ISOFOTON SA to refund to the Government of Ghana the cedi equivalent of $325,472 it received as judgement debt. The money is to be repaid with interest from March 2011 to the date of final payment.
The Court by a unanimous decision ruled that the company's contract with government was not approved by Parliament hence it is null and void.
The ruling follows an application by former Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Martin Amidu, that the company had no basis to make the claims because it had no contract with the government of Ghana, the breach of which should result in the payment of any judgement debt.
But moments after the ruling, country representative of the company Anane Agyei-Forson, in an interview with Okay fm, rather insisted that the government of Ghana owes the company. He argued on the grounds of �Quantum meruit� Latin for "as much as he has deserved" (Damages awarded in an amount considered reasonable to compensate a person who has provided services in a quasi-contractual relationship. A claim in quantum meruit is usually an action to recover the reasonable value of services rendered by one party to another).
�The position of ISOFOTON in this ruling of the Supreme Court is that, the company will not pay a penny to government and that government rather owes us. It was government�s deception which made us to incur this loss�and so what the Supreme Court has ruled, we disagree����..the money the court has ordered us to pay, government owes us some money because we incurred some debt in the project so they should deduct the amount the court is asking us to pay from how much they owe us and give us the balance�this is what ISOFOTON wants everybody to know and we want it to be made clear,� Mr. Anane Agyei Forson stated.
According to him, though they agree with the ruling that the agreement was not laid before Parliament, there is empirical evidence to show the Spanish company began work on the project which the government promised to pay with interest, adding that ISOFOTON has incurred losses close running into several millions of cedis because of that.
��if government pays us, we will accept it but if they are hoping to receive money from us, then they must forget it. I accept the SC ruling but I disagree with it�; adding that �the company is not prepared to pay anything and since the court has taken me out of the case, if the government wants the money, they should go to ISOFOTON in Spain but their position is that they will not pay a penny to Ghana government,� Anane-Agyei said.
To him, the court�s decision was unfair because it was through no fault of theirs that the then government failed to send the agreement to Parliament for approval.
�If we have an agreement with government and it is supposed to be laid before Parliament, who should send it to Parliament? Is it ISOFOTON who should come from Spain to send the agreement to Parliament for approval? he inquired rather sarcastically.
He was of the strong opinion that the contract should have been sent to Parliament by the government of the day under the leadership of President John Agyekum Kufuor to make it legally binding; adding that ISOFOTON cannot be made to suffer for the inactions or inefficiencies of a particular administration.
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