A member of pressure group, OccupyGhana, says the Attorney-General cannot be trusted to retrieve some GHC51 million judgment debt paid to Alfred Woyome after her request to discontinue the case has been granted.
Sydney Caseley-Hayford says although Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong’s notice to the apex court may be consistent with law, her actions in the past makes the request problematic.
“The credibility of the A-G is now at stake here because first of all, you didn’t pursue the case. Somebody else had to come and pursue the case,” he said.
“What we are saying is that we do not believe that you will come back to it,” Sydney Caseley-Hayford said on news analysis programme, PM Express on the Joy News Channel on Multi TV, Wednesday.
The A-G has asked the Supreme Court to cause the businessman to appear before her on November 10, 2016, for an oral examination on the GH¢51 million fraudulently paid to him by the state.
OccupyGhana says the request by the timing of the request makes it sinister, suspecting that the A-G’s request has been necessitated by a threat issued by the businessman that he would reveal all the individuals who benefited from the judgment.
Speaking on PM Express, Mr Casely-Hayford said the request for an oral examination by the A-G feeds into the suspicion of Ghanaians that the money fraudulently paid to Mr Woyome will be retrieved.
“You are filing for discontinuance of a case where we all were expecting that some kind of judgement was going to come out of it,” he quizzed the Attorney General’s request to the Court.
“As to the actual collection of the money if you ask any Ghanaian on the street today they will tell you that they have no hope of ever getting that money. They know they are not going to see that money,” he said.
However, speaking on the same programme, a lawyer for the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Kojogah Adawudu, said the criticisms against the request are unwarranted.
“I believe [the request] is permissible by the law. By the rules of procedure of the court, you are allowed that. When you are a plaintiff and you send your matter to court you can discontinue without leave, you can [also] continue with the leave of the court,” he said.
He explains that the fact that the A-G has filed to discontinue does not necessarily mean that the request will be granted.
Mr Woyome earned public disaffection after it came to light that he received GHC51 million fraudulently after he claimed that he helped Ghana to raise funds to construct stadia for purposes of hosting the CAN 2008 Nations Cup.
An Auditor General’s report released in 2010, however, said the amount was paid illegally to the businessman.
The Supreme Court in 2014 ordered Mr Woyome to pay back GHC51 million fraudulently taken from the state, after Mr Martin Amidu, a former Attorney General single-handedly initiated and won a legal campaign against him, Waterville, and Isofoton – two other companies who fraudulently received judgement debt from the state.
Following delays in retrieving the money, the Supreme Court judges unanimously granted the Attorney-General clearance to execute the court’s judgment ordering Mr Woyome to refund the cash to the state.
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