<<Print>>

The Attorney General’s (AG) Department discontinued its case against Alfred Woyome, in the GHc51 million judgment debt saga because it was considering a possible settlement with the defendant, President John Mahama has said.

The AG’s department, led by the Minister for Justice, Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong, was met with criticism and accusations of corruption following a decision to discontinue an application to examine the one-time NDC financier orally.

Leading the charge against the AG was a former Attorney-General and anti-corruption campaigner, Martin Amidu, as he filed a successful application at the Supreme Court to examine Mr. Woyome following the AG’s discontinuation of the case.

Mr. Amidu in his application to the Supreme Court, alleged among other things that the AG withdrew her application to examine Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome, because President Mahama personally gave an order.

Allegations disheartening and false

But the President described the claim as falsehoods brewed for the “purposes of political propaganda,” as he maintained that the AG had “pursued this case relentlessly.”

Speaking at the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation’s presidential encounter series on Wednesday, he explained that, the AG put in application for oral examination, but at the same time, “discussions had been ongoing in respect of a settlement and before that happened, a terms of settlement was granted.”

“So she [the AG] went to the Supreme Court and discontinued the oral examination so that she could look at the terms of settlement and see if it was acceptable, or meet with his lawyers and agree on what the terms were with the option to come back in the event she was not satisfied with the terms,” he stated.

President Mahama further lamented that, there are people “who are just willing to publish any allegations in the papers against the person of the president and there all kinds of false claims, allegations and things – sometimes you read and get disheartened,”

Background to Woyome saga

Alfred Woyome was paid GHc 51 million after he claimed to have helped raise funds to construct stadia for purposes of hosting the CAF 2008 Nations Cup.

However an Auditor General’s report released in 2010, said the amount was paid illegally to the National Democratic Congress (NDC) financier.

The Supreme Court in 2014 subsequently ordered Mr. Woyome to pay back the GHc 51 million fraudulently taken from the state, after Mr. Amidu challenged the legality of the judgment debt paid the businessman and two other companies; Waterville and Isofoton.