August 12, lead story
The Attorney-General’s Department has initiated moves to fully recover GH¢51.2 million from businessman Alfred Agbesi Woyome.
“We received a certified copy of the Supreme Court judgement
directing Woyome to refund the GH¢51.2 million to the state last
Thursday and we are currently studying it,” the Attorney-General and
Minister of Justice, Mrs Marietta Brew Appiah-Opong, told the Daily
Graphic in an interview in Accra yesterday.
She said, she would
hold a meeting with the attorneys who handled the case this week, after
which “we will move in to vigorously enforce the judgement to recover
the full amount”.
Explaining further, she said the A-G’s
department would file the necessary legal papers before the resumption
of the legal year in its bid to recover the money.
Mrs
Appiah-Opong declined to fully disclose how her outfit intended to
enforce the court’s judgement, but assured the public that “our aim is
to recover the money and we would do exactly that.”
The legal
vacation commences from the first week of August and ends in the last
week of September. Therefore, the superior courts are expected to resume
for the new legal year on the second Monday of October 2014.
Background
The
Supreme Court, on July 29, 2014, ordered Woyome to refund GH¢51.2
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.
June 14, 2013 judgement
The
court had, on June 14, 2013, directed the international construction
firm, Waterville Holdings Limited (BVI), to refund all the money paid to
it by the Ghana government on the premise that it had no valid and
constitutional contractual agreement with the government.
Waterville
is expected to refund 25 million euros it received from the government,
following the court’s judgement that the said contract it entered into
with the government for stadia construction for CAN 2008 was
unconstitutional.
That was because it had contravened Article 181
(5) of the 1992 Constitution which required such contracts to go to
Parliament for approval.
Mr Amidu had, in the original suit,
prayed the court to order Woyome to refund the money he had received as a
result of the void contract the government had entered into with
Waterville Holdings.
But the court declined jurisdiction over the
issue, with the reason that the Attorney-General was currently pursuing
the matter at the Commercial Court to retrieve the money.
The review
According
to the applicant, who filed the application for review on July 12,
2013, he had read the two judgements delivered by the Supreme Court very
carefully, along with other Ghanaians of like thinking, and had come to
the conclusion that some aspects of the judgement contained
“exceptional circumstances that have resulted in what we perceive may
constitute a miscarriage of justice”.
He said the 1992
Constitution imposed both rights and obligations, particularly under
articles 2 and 3, on every Ghanaian citizen to ensure that the
constitutional order established by the Constitution was not threatened
or by an unlawful means abrogated.
Contract null and void
In
the Waterville judgement, the court declared as null and void and of no
operative effect a contract titled: “Contract for the Rehabilitation
(Design, Construction, Fixtures, Fittings and Equipment) of a 40,000
Seating Capacity Baba Yara Sports Stadium in Kumasi, Ghana” entered into
between the Republic of Ghana and Waterville Holdings (BVI) Limited, of
P.O. Box 3444, Road Town, Tortola, British Virgin Islands on April 26,
2006.
The review decision
Reversing aspects of the
court’s June 2013 judgement on behalf of her colleagues, Mrs Justice
Wood said the conduct of the then Attorney General and Minister of
Justice in paying or ordering the payment of money to Austro Invest for a
“purported” financial engineering which arose out of an April 26, 2006
agreement was, therefore, unconstitutional.Austro-Invest was contracted
by Woyome to syndicate funding for the grant of a 1.1 billion euro
facility but was paid off by Woyome.
Woyome had, on June 25, 2014,
told the Financial Division of the High Court hearing a criminal case
instituted against him by the state that Austro-Invest sued him at the
High Court, but the case was discontinued after he had paid $1 million
to Austro Invest through M-powapak.
Proceedings at High Court void
The
court further declared as null and void and of no legal effect
proceedings at the High Court (Commercial Division) that entertained a
suit brought against the state by Woyome on April 19, 2010.
It
also held that the conduct of Woyome and Austro-Invest in making claims
and receiving payment on two “in-operative agreements” which were
international businesses and had not received parliamentary approval was
also illegal.
Lead opinion
The court’s lead
opinion, on which the entire judgement hinged, was delivered by Mr
Justice Dotse, who espoused the need for strict adherence to all
components of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana.
Meanwhile, the criminal case instituted against Woyome by the state has been adjourned to October 10, 2016.
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