Woyome Saga - Another Top Official 'Arrested'...Former A-G Next

Peacefmonline.com is reliably informed that another state official implicated in the controversial Woyome scandal, Mr Paul Asimenu, Director at the Legal Department of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning (MOFEP), is currently at the Police Headquarters being interrogated. Mr Paul Asimenu, according to the Economic and Organised Crime Organisation (EOCO) Interim Report, assumed a role which helped in creating the conditions which made it possible for Mr Woyome to get paid what he clearly was not due. He is the third person to be invited for questioning in the unfolding Woyome saga. On Saturday, the Chief State Attorney, Mr Samuel Nerquaye-Tetteh was picked up by personnel from the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service after the alleged mastermind Alfred Woyome himself was arrested on Friday. The Chief State Attorney is one of many officials found liable in the EOCO Interim Report following a probe into the payment of some GHc51 million to Woyome. The EOCO report also indicted former Attorney-General Betty Mould-Iddrisu and two officials of the Kufuor Administration, Mr Yaw Osafo-Maafo, Minister of Education, Science and Sports at the time and Mr Osei Bonsu Amoah, Deputy Minister of Education, Youth and Sports at the time. The EOCO Interim Report established that Mr Paul Asimenu was the person who wrote the opinion which eventually led to the decision that Mr Woyome was entitled to his claims, adding that during interrogations, Mr Asimenu admitted that the figures he had quoted in his advice as the basis of the evaluation by the Finance Committee of the Central Tender Review Board (CTRB) on which he served were wrong. It said he admitted that he had misled the A-G and that he went further to give personal advice to the A-G on the correctness of the claim, since it was based on international best practice. According to the report, Mr Asimenu�s claim that he was authorised by the Minister of Finance, Dr Kwabena Duffuor, to send the opinion had been challenged by Dr Duffuor, whose position was supported by the fact that he queried the settlement based on the said advice when it came to his attention. �Again, there is substantial difference between the memo which he claims to have discussed with the Minister of Finance and the advice letter he eventually sent to the A-G. While in the memo to the Minister of Finance he did not mention any amount of money as what has been made available by the Bank of Austria through the Woyome-led consortium, in the advice letter to the A-G he stated that the grand total of sums made available by the Bank of Austria through the Woyome-led consortium, therefore, amounted to 1,106,470,587,� it added "Mr Asimenu assumed a role which he helped in creating the conditions which made it possible for Mr Woyome to get paid for what he clearly was not due,� the EOCO Interim Report concluded.