The Government of Ghana (GoG) says it has identified key assets of businessman Alfred Agbesi Woyome which it intends to seize as part of processes to retrieve the Ghc51-million-cedi wrongful judgement debt paid him.
An Accra High Court presided over by Justice John Ajet-Nassam acquitted and discharged Mr. Woyome who was facing two charges- causing financial loss to the state and defrauding the state by false pretenses. The judge in his ruling said the state prosecution did a shoddy job and failed to provide enough evidence to back its claims.
But Deputy Attorney General, Dominic Ayine, says the government is bent on retrieving the money.
According to him, the government is now at the Supreme Court to seek direction on how to enforce its decision and retrieve the money. The Supreme Court on July 29, 2014, ordered Woyome to refund Ghc51.2 million to the state on the grounds that he got the money out of unconstitutional and invalid contracts between the state and Waterville Holdings Limited in 2006, for the construction of stadia for CAN 2008.
It held, in a unanimous decision, that the contracts upon which Woyome made and received the claim were in contravention of Article 181 (5) of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana, which requires such contracts to be laid before and approved by Parliament.
The 11-member court presided over by the Chief Justice, Mrs Justice Georgina Theodora Wood, was ruling on a review application filed by a former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Mr Martin Amidu. Other members of the panel were Justices Julius Ansah, Sophia Adinyira, Rose Owusu, Jones Dotse, Anin Yeboah, Paul Baffoe-Bonnie, N. S. Gbadegbe, Vida Akoto Bamfo, A. A. Bennin and J.B. Akamba.
The deputy Attorney General promised that the government would in the next few weeks come out on how far it has gone in recovering the money.
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