Woyome granted permission to travel abroad

The Fast Track High Court on Wednesday granted permission to Alfred Agbesi Woyome, alleged to have defrauded the state of GHS51.2 million, to travel outside the country for 12 days.

Mr Osafo Buabeng, counsel for Woyome, had made a case for his client to travel outside the country.

The presiding judge, Mr Justice John Ajet-Nasam, said he did not remember imposing any travel restriction on Woyome, neither did he have knowledge of any other court’s position on the matter because “for those of us who don’t use the VIP Lounge to travel, a lot of things go on there when one is in Woyome’s situation".

Mr Woyome told the court that he would be travelling on April 5 and return 12 days later.

That compelled the judge to change the adjourned date from April 16 to April 23. Earlier, Mr. Buabeng had taken his turn to cross-examine the Director of Legal at the Public Procurement Authority (PPA), Mrs Lesley Duodu.

Explaining some procurement terms, Mrs Duodu said a tender was said to be ascertained if it had approval from the Central Tender Review Board, while the bidding process was deemed to be complete when a contract was signed.

She said an entity could decide to cancel the bidding process once it had not signed the contract. She also said the default position of the act was that everything about tender must be advertised and competitively managed or sourced.

Woyome has been charged with two counts of wilfully causing financial loss to the state and defrauding by false pretence for allegedly putting in false representation to claim GHS 1.2 million from the government through a default judgement.

He has, however, pleaded not guilty to the charges and is currently on a GHS20 million bail.

Five prosecution witnesses who have so far testified in the matter are a Deputy Head of the Legal Department of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning (MOFEP), Mrs Mangowa Ghanney, a former Minister of Finance, Mr Yaw Osafo-Marfo, and a former Deputy Minister of Finance, Mr Kwaku Agyemang-Manu.

The others are Ms Yvonne Quansah, who is stationed at the Financial Sector Division of MOFEP, and Mr Lionel Vanlare Dosoo, a former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana.