In any country where reasonable laws are enacted and made to
function and prevail, no one is ever guilty of an alleged crime unless and
until duly prosecuted and convicted. In
particular, Article 19(2)[c] of 1992 Constitution of Ghana and Article 14 of
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) do not hide this
fundamental legal principle of ‘presumed innocence’.
Background
In 2010, Alfred Agbesi Woyome was paid by Finance Ministry of
Ghana a consent judgment amount totaling up to GhȻ51, 283480.58. The consent and terms of settlement was that
which was duly reached in a court of Ghana. Upon audit report, public outcry and political
maneuverings on revelations thereof, then President John Evans Atta Mills
(Prof) ordered for an investigation which Economic and Organized Crimes Office
(EOCO) took up, investigated and produced a report.
Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome is a businessman who used to be
engaged in variety of business activities including what was noted to be
‘financial engineering’. He was said to have paid monies to NPP at one point
and to NDC at another. He is, however, controversially labeled in some
mischievous quarters of the media as ‘NDC financier or bankroller’.
Damning EOCO report
EOCO report was damning on four main grounds: Presidential
authority appeared to have been undermined since Professor Mills was said to
have instructed finance ministry and attorney general to stop payment but to no
avail. The second ground is that attorney general at least lackadaisically tried
to stop the payment through the Court but the Court appeared to have denied the
request thereof. Thirdly, the Court had asked for part payment of the money to Woyome
pending other settlements. But apparently flagrant instructions from attorney
general made Finance Ministry to have incautiously paid all the GhȻ51.283million.
The fourth ground is that, the former administration under
President John Agyekum Kufuor of NPP may
have had unnecessarily introduced Woyome to CAN 2008 financial engineering
processes who may have leveraged governmental prefecture to gain more
recognition and favor with Waterville/Vamed. In this connection, procurement processes
appeared to have been recklessly terminated at the expense of Vamed/Waterville.
The subsequent memorandum of understanding reached with Vamed/Waterville and
authorization thereof to go to site which was complied with may have formed the
basis for Woyome to dare into the political maneuvering space of the succeeding
government led by Prof Mills of NDC.
While others discredited EOCO’s report and labeled it as
face-saving measure, without any alternative matching report of such caliber,
majority of people (especially those who had the opportunity to read it)
regarded the report as credible enough to draw a reasonable conclusion on what
had transpired. I was one of those who gave the report benefit of the doubt and
was anxious to see how any court processes will unveil the reasonable truth.
To my agitated mind, it appeared that there was an
uncharitable collusion between the Court where the consent judgment was reached
on one hand and Attorney General Ministry, Finance Ministry and Woyome on the
other. As the report intimated, I was far from convinced that the issue was
about one ‘criminal Woyome’ (as peddled around) outsmarting all actors in three
government institutions in order to dupe the State of huge sums. I cautiously
saw Woyome trying to fight for his legitimate business rights but unduly took
advantage of a weak and malleable system for his private gain ever more than
deserved.
Attorney general in
court
The attorney general was back in court praying the court to
order Woyome to refund the GhȻ51.2million which, they deemed, had been
‘mistakenly’ doled out to him. On the other hand, the attorney general was also
seeking the court to have Woyome imprisoned for having ‘defrauded the State by
false pretence and caused financial loss to the State’. Under the contentiously
convoluted circumstance, neither ‘mistake payment’ nor ‘defrauding by false
pretence and causing financial loss to the state’ was ever expected to be an
easy- walk-through for the attorney general in court, even with a best legal
foot forward.
In a bizarre
discretion of attorney general, however, Woyome was the only one strongly put
forward for trial - the two or so other people that were put on trial were not
really the people at the centre of the controversy. The attorney general, of
course, has had its basis for ignoring the so-called central people. Perhaps,
the attorney general did not have enough evidence on people like Mrs. Betty
Mould Iddrisu, Mr. Paul Asimenu and Mr. Nerquaye-Tetteh. Or that their legal
conviction was that Woyome deceived all of them. We are yet to be told exactly why all of that
happened. Sadly, it appears the prosecutors owe the public no such explanation.
I reemphasize here my ambivalence about Woyome’s ability to
have outwitted all the technical men – just like that. It was therefore no wonder that attorney
general could sustain only the trial of Woyome, at least for a while.
Court judgements
The civil court case
to retrieve the money from Woyome appeared to have been swallowed by 29/07/2014
judgement of Supreme Court of Ghana in favour of a review suit (citizen action
under articles 2 and 3, 1992 constitution) by Mr. Martin Amidu. The court agreed with Martin that the said
contract which Woyome associated himself with (i.e. Vamed/Waterville) was
invalid and unconstitutional because under article 181(5), international
agreements such as that must have been approved by the Parliament of Ghana,
which was not done. The court made consequential order that Woyome should
refund the GhȻ51.2million to the State.
It nonetheless would have been very interestingly instructive
to see what outcome the earlier action by attorney general in the Commercial
Court to retrieve the money would have yielded if the Supreme Court had not
intervened through Martin. That perhaps would have been more decisive and
fairer under the circumstances.
However, on March 12th 2015, the High Court found Woyome not
guilty of the criminal charge of ‘defrauding by false pretence and causing
financial loss to the state’ and thus went on to acquit and discharge him. One of
the shocking reasons advanced by presiding judge Justice John Adjet Nassam was
that not only the prosecutors could not prove beyond all reasonable doubt to
convince him but also the prosecution was ‘shoddy’, particularly citing
unavailability of crucial witnesses or perceived conspirators. Apparently,
‘shoddy’ reason adduced could simply imply that the judge was overreaching his remit perhaps merely to appease the rage
of the public or that he may have been angered
by what he may have seen as unacceptable manner in which the prosecutors
handled the case.
Vehemently disagreeing and visibly angered by the release of
Woyome and description of poor prosecutor conduct, the attorney general quickly
filed appeal against Adjet Nassam’s ruling. On 10th March 2016 however, the
appeal court upheld the decision of Adjet Nassam and thus acquitted and
discharged Woyome on the crime of ‘defrauding the State by false pretence and
causing financial loss to the State’. Woyome appeared to have become a free man
albeit with Supreme Court’s Constitutional interpretation order to refund the GhȻ51.2million
still hanging on his neck.
Innocent before the law
Save the Supreme Court order
which did not even touch on innocence or otherwise of Woyome or those
who did not get Woyome’s contract (if it
ever existed) approved by Parliament,
Woyome, in the case of GhȻ51.2million paid to him for financial engineering,
was not a criminal and is still not a criminal in the eyes of the law.
This is regardless of how some people including myself would
have wished the prosecutors should have gone about the prosecution. It does not
also matter how people may suspect the integrity of the judicial process
including conduct of officers of court and judges.
The fact is that if Woyome had been convicted as would have
wished by some people, such people may not have raised any eyebrows even if
Woyome had been unfairly convicted. The need to respect the verdict of the law
no matter the dissatisfaction of either party is, therefore, instructively
sacrosanct.
Criminal in eyes of
political actors
It is understandable that political actors wanting to score
political points almost succeeded in convicting Woyome in court of public
opinion as ‘a criminal’. This is because even though there were other alleged
infractions in the same audit report where Woyome was initially raised, it was
Woyome’s case which could be conveniently used to tag NDC as corrupt.
However, although political capital was hardly fetched with
it and consequent verdict of the court that Woyome was not a criminal after
all, some political actors like former President J J Rawlings ‘of NDC’ and Nana
Akomea of NPP were recently reported in the media as continuing to taint Woyome
with a criminal brush in a vulnerable posture suggesting that the government
did not do a good job.
But that the prosecution did not do a good job in the eyes of
some people cannot, by any means, make someone vindicated by a court still
regarded as a criminal. If we were to take this stance, then I dare say that
there would not be any prosecution that would be accepted as good enough by any
losing party. If this posture were to be elevated, it would dangerously
undermine people’s confidence not just in prosecution but also in adjudication.
After all, no matter the shoddiness that shrouded the prosecution and verdict in
Adjet Nassam’s Court, all the appeal court judges could not have unanimously
upheld the release of Woyome by the lower court if they found something
terribly wrong.
Bottom-line
I personally have had a hard time trying to unpack issues
that point to Woyome being a criminal or not. I am not convinced that Woyome’s
Saga is not one of daily politically tainted projects which some politicians
use to enrich themselves. These cases
are well planned and shrouded in secrecy more often beyond the grasp of the
law.
To my mind, some of the politicians that have been parading
themselves as latter day saints and making Woyome’s case any different than their
blemished selves not forgetting the over GhȻ 200,000,000 wasted in 2014
auditor’s report may have no integrity and moral right, to start with. They must
admit the universal culpability of political and civil classes from both NDC
and NPP and from many MMDA’s across the country.
That said, Woyome must refund the GhȻ51.2million as promised
the Supreme Court as long as the order stands. His right to proceed to
international court to challenge the consequential order of Supreme Court is
particularly protected by article 2 of ICCPR and article 40 of 1992
constitution of Ghana. But this is likely to further drag his name into the mud
even if he emerges winner thereof. At
the moment, regardless of my misgivings, Woyome is not a criminal before the
law and he is a free man.
He must be minded to advise his caliber and pretentious
political actors who are currently despising him but are daily sneaking and
lurking around corridors of power to milk the State that it is high time they
took ordinary Ghanaians very seriously, even before the law.
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