Betty Mould-Iddrisu Must Be Prosecuted

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Garden City, New York

March 21, 2015

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

The very public allegation by Attorney-General Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong that she "personally begged" former Attorney-General Betty Mould-Iddrisu to serve as a prosecution witness in the GHC 51 million Woyome Heist, and that the collusive Atta-Mills cabinet appointee who personally doled out the loot had flatly refused her collaborative request is quite telling of the damnable extent to which the most highly placed members of the Mills-Mahama government may have been involved in this humongous caper (See "Woyome Scandal: I Begged Betty But She 'Snubbed' The State - AG Suggests" MyJoyOnline.com 3/18/15).

If we have Mrs. Appiah-Oppong correctly quoted, then it clearly appears that Mrs. Mould-Iddrisu was personally trying to save her own skin, especially since Attorney-General Appiah-Oppong also notes that had the State or the Court compelled Mrs. Mould-Iddrisu to testify in the Woyome Heist, the latter would have proven to be a hostile witness. What is significant to observe here is that the verdict of the Fast-Track High Court had absolutely no effect on the fact of the patently established criminality of the accused. Not only has Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome personally admitted to this much in a letter that he fired off to the media, in the wake of the equally scandalous Ajet Nassam Verdict, Mr. Woyome's criminal culpability has already been determined by the Wood-presided Supreme Court of Ghana.

What is interesting here, however, is the imperious insistence of then-Attorney-General Mould-Iddrisu that she was within the legal ambit when she so criminally and unconscionably authorized the sum of GHC 51 million to be paid to Mr. Woyome under the already judicially determined false pretense of having legitimately and successfully fulfilled a contractual compact that Mr. Woyome had with the State. As I vividly recall, prior to Mr. Woyome's maiden court appearance, both former President John Agyekum-Kufuor and Mr. Yaw Osafo-Maafo, the Finance Minister at the time that Mr. Woyome claims to have been awarded his stadia-construction contract, vehemently denied that any such contractual agreement had ever been forged or existed between the extant Government of Ghana and the accused.

What the preceding clearly means is that Mrs. Mould-Iddrisu needs to be invited by the relevant branch of the judiciary to explain the justification for her decision to facilitate Mr. Woyome's clearly wilfull attempt to bilk the Ghanaian taxpayer. In other words, had she been as professionally savvy as she would have Ghanaians and the rest of the world believe, the former Attorney-General would have cut a deal with her current successor which would have protected Mrs. Mould-Iddrisu from incriminating herself or being prosecuted in the offing. As matters stand, the former Education Minister has rendered herself more vulnerable and culpable for criminal prosecution. But, of course, as we have just been told, Mrs. Mould-Iddrisu is not alone in her looming predicament. Her Deputy Attorney-General at the time, Mr. Ebo Barton-Odro, stands equally criminally culpable for having facilitated the Woyome Heist.

What is definitely not kosher or is clearly lame here, is Attorney-General Appiah-Oppong's allegation that the decision by the government of the National Democratic Congress not to prosecute Mrs. Mould-Iddrisu was taken at the highest levels of government and well before she was named to the office of Attorney-General and Minister of Justice. The fact of the matter is that if Mrs. Appiah-Oppong were as conscientious as she would have the public believe, and she also firmly believes that Mrs. Mould-Iddrisu egregiously erred in paying out the people's hard-earned money to a criminally scheming Mr. Woyome, then absolutely nothing prevents her from revisiting the Mould-Iddrisu part of the Woyome scam, in a bid to setting things aright.

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