Police Grill Waterville Over �25m Woyome Cash

ANDREA ORLANDI, the Managing Director of Waterville, was yesterday grilled by a panel of crack investigators at the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) Headquarters in Accra, as the security agency turns its attention to one of the companies involved in the Woyome scandal. Waterville, which is linked to the high-profile foremost estate developers Trassacco, is said to have pocketed �25million as its share of the gargantuan judgment debt authorized by former Attorney General Betty Mould-Iddrisu, for the rehabilitation of three stadia for the CAN 2008 tournament. Waterville received the payment from the Ghana government when there was no record to show that the State owed it any money. There are speculations that the company colluded with National Democratic Congress (NDC) financier Alfred Agbesi Woyome to defraud the state. It is the first time the police are interrogating a top official of Waterville, which the NDC financier claimed he helped in securing funding for the CAN 2008 stadia projects. The engagement between the detectives and the Waterville official took nearly six hours, sources said. Andrea is said to have walked into the CID facility at about 8:30am, leaving at about 1:00pm after enduring bouts of questions. A police source told DAILY GUIDE that Andrea Orlandi�s interrogation had provided an impetus to police investigations on the Woyome financial rip-off. He is said to have provided document-supporting details which will bring the embattled NDC financier and his cohort to their knees. The source said credible information suggests that Woyome did not really have a contract with the state. There are suspicions that Woyome might have taken advantage of the change in government, with the assumption of power by President Atta Mills and falsified documents to lay claim to the whopping GH�51.2million which has become an albatross around his neck and that of government. Alfred Agbesi Woyome, who is currently on a GH�20million bail, was indicted after a damning Economic And Organised Crime Office (EOCO) report nailed him for claiming money he was not entitled to, through the manipulation of figures. President Mills, the report claimed, had on two occasions stopped the payment of the GH51, 283,480.59 judgment debt awarded him by Justice I.O. Tanko Amadu, for breach of contract regarding the renovation of three stadia in Accra and Kumasi for the hosting of the 2008 African Cup of Nations tournament. Waterville has, through its lawyers, indicated in a reaction to Woyome�s claim that Waterville, which sought financial engineering services from M-Powapak, terminated its relationship with the said company after the termination of the stadia contract it had with the Government of Ghana on November 20, 2006. With the CID of the Police Service clearly spreading its net wider, the Woyome scandal would take interesting turns. Many are speculating that Ernesto Terracone, the Italian owner of Trassacco Valley, would definitely make a date with the state detectives. The Woyome scandal, the worst in the nation�s fiscal history, has taken a political twist outside the accounting journals, especially as fresh details continue to pop up. Woyome�s arrest recently was met with mixed reactions across the political spectrum. While NDC supporters and some chiefs from the Volta Region frowned upon it, the larger Ghanaian population deemed it justifiable and even asked for more such arrests of other government officials still at post. The arrest of O.B. Amoah, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) MP for the Aburi-Nsawam constituency, attracted widespread condemnation, especially from NPP supporters and leadership of the party because they saw in the action a political motive, with the intention to make it look like the other side of the political divide also had a smeared hand in the scandal. With the companies related to the scandal now making dates with the CID, more damning revelations are set to hit the public domain. The President�s feigning of ignorance about the whole scandal continues to suffer bashings from Ghanaians who stand on the EOCO revelation that he tried twice to stop the payment, yet his directives were ignored. Yaw Osafo Maafo, former Minister of Education and Sports under whose tenure the contracts were awarded, and Betty Mould-Iddrisu, former Attorney General, had been equally interrogated for their alleged roles in the scandal.