Woyome to sue Akomea

Lawyer for Businessman Alfred Agbesi Woyome, David Annan has threatened to sue the Communications Director of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) for releasing a press statement charging President John Dramani Mahama and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to account for monies paid to Mr Woyome or face series of street protests.

The NPP’s press statement signed by Mr Akomea on Wednesday, November 2, was released after the Attorney General had filed a notice to discontinue the case against Mr Woyome, at the Supreme Court.

The statement said “We demand that President Mahama and his government retrieve the full value of our monies otherwise the party intends to lead Ghanaians in street protests,” adding that ““create, loot and share cannot be rewarded. President Mahama must account for our monies or be shown the red card”.

In response to the NPP’s statement on Class FM’s 505 on Wednesday, Mr Annan said Mr Akomea would be dragged to court for the press release.

“We are going to take Nana Akomea to court for that press statement he has issued. There are couple of guys who are already facing contempt charges in court and actually Nana Akomea should have been the third respondent but for certain reasons we left him out of it but it looks as if he himself willingly included himself in a future court action and I can promise him, he can take that from me, he can take that to the bank that we will take him to court for the press statement and the words that he has put in that press statement” he stated.

Mr Annan explained that “He (Nana Akomea) is saying because a Supreme Court judge used the words create, loot and share that means that my client is guilty of corruption or some sort of robbery or some form of criminal act. It appears the NPP are determined to hang their coat on the peg of what the Supreme Court judge said. Now that case was a civil case, it had nothing to do with any criminal matter and therefore if you keep importing criminality into a civil matter, when the matter was decided on article 181 (5) and not on any provision on any criminal act, Act 29, what you are doing is courting trouble for yourself and we have made it quite clear to them several times that they should cease and desist. However it appears they intend to use this Woyome thing as a campaign strategy. Let me assure them it will fail. We will make sure the reputation of our client is adequately protected by the courts”.

In response to the threat to sue him on the same platform, Mr Akomea said the NPP has no problem with Mr Woyome but government, for not retrieving the GHS51.2million from the businessman.

It would be recalled that a civil motion was filed by former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Mr. Martin Alamisi Amidu, in October 2014, against the Attorney-General, Waterville Holdings (BVI) Limited, and Mr. Woyome for the recovery of GHS51.2million.

Mr. Woyome collected the money from the state as judgment debt, following the failure of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration to pay his percentage for spearheading a financial engineering crusade from Bank Austria towards the construction of new stadia in the build up to CAN 2008.

Even though he was exonerated from all criminal charges, he was supposed to refund the monies back to the state.

In view of that an affidavit was filed by the A-G asking the Apex Court to order the defendant (Mr Woyome) to appear before it on Thursday, November 10, at 9:00 am, “to be examined orally on oath by the A-G whether Mr Woyome has any property or other means of satisfying the judgment debt”.

But the A-G in a U-turn has filed a notice to discontinue the case against Mr Woyome, at the Supreme Court.

The Notice of Discontinuance, signed by Mrs. Dorothy Afriyie-Ansah, Chief State Attorney, read: “Please, take notice that the 1st Defendant Judgment creditor herein has this 26th day of October, 2016, discontinued the present application to orally examine the 3rd Defendant /Judgment/Debtor with liberty to reapply”.