Ghana is going to pay me a lot money after my case ends – Woyome

Embattled businessman and NDC financier, Alfred Agbesi Woyome has stated Ghana will be paying him a lot of money after his case ends.

Mr Woyome was paid an amount of GHC 51.2 million as judgment debt between 2009-2010 following his claim a contract he had with the outgone New Patriotic Party (NPP) government to help build stadia for the CAN 2008 football tournament was wrongfully terminated.

Former Attorney General Martin Amidu dismissed his claim and made efforts to retrieve the money but was dismissed from his ministerial position before he could complete the process.

Mr Amidu, after his dismissal, still pursued the matter at the Supreme Court and won the case in July 2014 with the Supreme Court holding that he had no valid contract with the government to be paid that amount.

In the Supreme Court’s ruling ordering Woyome to pay the money back to the state, one of the judges, Justice Jones Dotse said it appeared those who facilitated the payment “entered into an alliance to create, loot and share the resources of this country as if a brigade had been set up for such an enterprise”.

Two years after, Mr Woyome was yet to pay the amount leading current Attorney-General Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong to file an application at the Supreme Court to examine Woyome in a bid to compel Woyome to disclose how he had spent the money and also name his assets so that, if possible, so they could be confiscated and sold to repay the money he owed the state.

This led to her being praised by including pressure group, OccupyGhana who could be counted among the Woyome Scandal’s fiercest critics.

However, in a sharp u-turn, the Attorney-General filed to discontinue the case, meaning she was no longer interested in examining Woyome in court.

Her action led Mr Amidu to file an application praying the Supreme Court to allow him to orally examine Woyome. But the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice would not want that done so she opposed the motion.

Mr Woyome immediately after the ruling to allow Mr. Amidu examine him on Wednesday took to the media to accuse the Supreme Court of unlawfully persecuting him.

According to him, the ruling was ridiculous because though he was in the process of paying GHC8 million of the debt to the Attorney General’s Department, the Supreme Court still went ahead with its ruling.

But speaking at a press conference on Friday, he said “before this case ends I am envisaging that Ghana is going to pay alot of money to me”.

This, he explained was because he never accepted the initial ruling ordering him to refund the money but was only abiding by the law while he contested the ruling.

“I have not accepted the Supreme Court judgement asking me to pay back the money. From the very moment the judgement was given I disagreed but I only agreed to pay as I contest the judgement”.

According to him, “I am a genuine business man, I have never taken bribe before and I don’t give anyone bribes” so he was wondering why he was being persecuted.