NPP tried to assassinate me -Consul Woyome

Former Vice honorary consul of Austria to Ghana and NDC top financier Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome has alleged that several attempts were made to assassinate him during the reign of the Kuffour led NPP.

He particularly accused Lawyer Paapa Owusu Ankomah, then minister for interior in the Kuffour regime of ordering his assassination with a decoy that he (Woyome) was dealing in illegal small arms. ‘and since dead men don’t speak, if they kill me, then it will be true that am indeed engaged in that. I won’t say how we managed to overpower the assassins but the leader of the group ordered his men to lay down their arms at a point in my house’ said Mr. Woyome. ’ Paapa Owusu Ankomah even admitted in his office that indeed he gave the orders but insisted that he did not know I was the target’.

Mr. Woyome was speaking at a press conference yesterday at the Alisa Hotel, north ridge-Accra in reaction to recent outbursts by NPP’s Kennedy Agyapong (MP) who accused him of being a criminal and threatened to expose him. According to Mr. Woyome, he and Mr. Kennedy Agyapong have no social link what so ever and have never engaged in any personal conversation and said that he’d been forced by the improper statements of Mr. Agyapong to reveal information that he previously agreed with the international community to keep secret adding that his lawyers are considering the unprintable words of Mr. Agyapong for the law to take its course since he will not, as he put it allow anybody to ‘massacre his good reputation’ for nothing.

Mr. Woyome in an almost two hour presentation to journalists revealed that Nana Akuffo Addo, the NPP’s presidential candidate, then attorney-general of Ghana ordered security personal to ransack his house as well as the Austrian consul in Ghana with the excuse that he was in cahoots with former president Rawlings to stage a coup because of his known relations with former Libyan leader Muamar Ghadaffi- a situation he considered harassment to a patriotic Ghanaian genuinely working to help his country and other neighboring countries.

Narrating further, Consul Woyome whose presentation was supported by numerous confidential and legal documents in the company of three of his lawyers said, at one point, armed police men who were sent to attack and kill him at his residence engaged in a fierce gun battle with his personal security guards resulting in injuries to both sides. He named Patrick Timbila, current Ashanti regional police commander as the police officer who covered up the incident at the time after refusing to take a written statement from him. ‘Patrick Timbila said to me to go and treat my men whiles he also treats his men. ACP Kofi Boakye who was then in-charge of greater Accra virtually begged me on his knees to let matters die. At the end, I only got an apology for it’ Mr. Woyome stated.

He dismissed claims that he gave a jolly ride to NDC people to go to South Africa for world cup in 2010 insisting that even NPP people as well as all media houses and GFA members benefited from his intervention to air- lift stranded soccer fans to South Africa- a venture he said cost him and his company about 1.4 million dollars. He explained that at the time, he had not worn any case in court and received any compensation and wondered why people want to link that benevolent with his current judgment debt.

Mr. Woyome also took the opportunity to deny he has any links with the funding of an NDC party building which debate is currently on-going. He further accused the Kuffour administration of axing several members of that regime such as Yaw Osafo Marfo and Kojo Owusu Afriyie aka SIR JOHN as youth and sports minister and deputy GNPC boss respectively for attempting to tell the truth about his case. He said Yaw Osafo Marfo was particularly sacked by Kuffour because he believed he (Woyome) intended to fund Osafo Marfo’s presidential bid.

Mr. Woyome recently won a court case against government of Ghana which has earned him close to 41 million Ghana cedis in judgment debt. This has elicited several reactions from elements within the opposition NPP who accuse the NDC government of intentionally loosing the case to him in order to grant him such colossal sums of money as a decoy to finance the ruling party.

But Mr. Woyome insists that indeed his own ruling government fought him very hard on the case and lost because of the merits of it. He accused elements of the NPP administration of rather causing financial loss to the state by taking away a project from his company and given to the Chinese company even though work had already begun in earnest with the pulling down of the old stadia in both Accra and Kumasi for commencement of reconstruction. Mr. Woyome told journalists he would release more information regarding the issue as and when he gets legal advice from his lawyers and partners.

Story by A.S Denis/xfm95.1/Accra-Ghana