Woyomegate: Police invite Kwadwo Mpiani

Former Chief of Staff in the erstwhile New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration, Mr. Kwadwo Mpiani will be the next ex-government official likely to face questioning over his role in the infamous Woyome scandal following a telephone invitation extended to him by the police.

Although information available to The New Crusading GUIDE about the invitation as at the time of filing this report was sketchy, it was clear that the former Chief of Staff’s invitation had everything to do with the ongoing investigations into the Waterville/Alfred Woyome judgement debt payments controversy.

Mr. Mpiani, this paper later learnt, could not honour the Police invitation due to some circumstances beyond his control but mutually entered into an agreement with the law enforcers, leading to the rescheduling of the meeting to Wednesday, April 4, 2012.

Since the matter took the centre stage of the country’s political discussions, there have been running media battles between Waterville and Mr. Mpiani over the cancellation of a supposed contract the former claims it won for the construction five stadia for the CAN 2008 tournament.

As Mr. Mpiani challenges Waterville Holdings to produce evidence to support their claim that they were awarded a contract to construct five stadia, the embattled company insists that the procurement process for the two stadia contract awarded to the Shangai was not in compliance of the Public Procurement Law.

To buttress this claim, Managing Director of Waterville, Andrea Orlandi at a recent press conference in Accra, said “In spite of the Waterville being given approval for the award of the five stadia, the government decided to award two of the five stadia already awarded to Waterville to Shangai Construction Group”.

According to him, on the basis of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the government, Waterville started work on the refurbishment of the Accra, Kumasi and Elwak sports stadia.

He said subsequent to this, a contract was signed on April 26, 2006 but was later abrogated.

But Mr. Mpiani has since maintained that Waterville was never given a contract to work on five stadia as claimed by Orlandi. He explained in various media interviews that the said April 26, 2006 contract quoted by Orlandi was in respect of the renovation of the three stadia which itself was predicated on Waterville’s ability to secure funding for the projects.

According to Mr. Mpiani, because Waterville failed to secure the funding which was a major prerequisite of the transaction, the government exercised its right to abrogate it – which was subsequently acknowledged by the Waterville without any protestation whatsoever.

He however found it curious that the company will, upon the coming into office of a new government, make claims on the basis of an illegal abrogation of the contract.

With regards to payments on the works done by the company before the termination of the contract in question, Mr Mpiani said the government agreed with Waterville that the amount due them would be paid to through subcontractors (Michiletti and Consar) who were then working on the projects.

Readers would recall that this paper as part of its ongoing exercise to establish that Waterville indeed made fraudulent claims against the State to secure 25 million Euros, published an October 24, 2008 letter authored by Mr. Mpiani informing them (Waterville) that the money owed them had been paid in full to the subcontractors – a position they did not dispute.**