Lawyers produce additional documents in court

Accra, June 22, GNA- Lawyers of Alfred Agbesi Woyome, a businessman on Friday tendered in three more documents to back claim that their client did not defraud the State.

They contended that their client went through lawful means to obtain the GH¢51.2 million judgment payment.

Woyome has pleaded not guilty to defrauding by false pretences and causing financial loss to the State.

He has been granted GH¢20 million bail with three sureties to be justified.

Mr Osafo Buabeng, member of Woyome's legal team continued the cross-examination of Mrs Mangowa Ghanney, Deputy Director of Legal Services, Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning (MOFEP) and noted that the accused acquired the GH¢51.2 million judgment settlement through legal means.

He then tendered three documents in court and asked witness to identify them to see whether they emanated from MOFEP.

Earlier, Mrs Ghanney produced copy of a memo which the court ordered her to produce at the previous sitting.

Mr Buabeng asked witness to identify the signature and whether Woyome was legitimately paid the judgement debt.

Mrs Ghanney affirmed her earlier position that Woyome was paid based on a default judgment.

She could not say whether or not Woyome was paid legitimately because she (Witness) did not author the letter tendered in by the defence.

Ms Cynthia Lamptey, Chief State Attorney at that juncture raised an objection to the defence tendering in the document.

She said Paul Asimenu, Director Legal Service at MOFEP, who was said to have authored the letter was alive and could appear in court in person to authenticate the letter.

Because of the controversy that ensued between the prosecution and defence, Mr Justice John Ajet-Nassam, the trial judge after a short recess, returned to rule that the defence should be allowed to tender in the letter.

The case was adjourned to July 3.
The prosecution's case was that, sometime in January 2005, the Government invited bids for the rehabilitation of the Ohene Djan and Baba Yara Sports stadia and the construction of two more stadia at Sekondi-Takoradi and Tamale.

At the end of the bidding process, some companies were short-listed and invited to submit proposals for the projects and among them were M-powapak Gmb/Vamed Gmbh &Co, K.

At the end of the evaluation process, the Finance and Evaluation Committee declared the financial proposals of M-powapak /Vamed Engineering as the most responsive and recommended them to the Central Tender Review Board.

However, before the Board could receive final approval, the Government terminated the process.

Meanwhile, in the course of the tendering process, Vamed Engineering assigned its rights and responsibilities to Waterville Holding (BVI) Ltd.

After termination of the tendering process, Waterville protested and entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Government to commence rehabilitation works on the Accra and El-Wak stadia.

The MoU signed on November 30, 2005, required Waterville to engineer funding for the project on behalf of the Government from Bank of Austria Creditanstalt AG, guaranteed by the World Bank's Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency.

The company arranged bridge financing and subsequent to the MoU, Waterville was authorised by the Ministry of Youth and Sports to move to the site and start work pending the signing of a formal contract.

On December 19, 2005, Waterville engaged M-powapak, led by Woyome, to provide it with financial engineering services in respect of the projects.

A formal contract for the rehabilitation of Ohene Djan and El-Wak stadia was entered into by the Government and Waterville Holding Limited on April 26, 2006.

However, before the contract could become effective the Government terminated same due to Waterville's inability to engineer funding for the project as contained in the MoU which formed a condition precedent to the contract.

Waterville, who initially protested against the termination, eventually accepted the move and proceeded to claim monies for the initial works done under the MoU.

The Government paid a substantial amount of Waterville's claims out of which the company, fully paid M-powapak, represented by the accused for the financial engineering services rendered under the contract.

Payment to the accused for his services was duly acknowledged by him in a termination agreement dated November 25, 2006 which brought the relationship between them to an end.

Sometime in August 2009 however, the accused having received all monies due him under the financial engineering services rendered to Waterville, took advantage of the change in government and falsely represented to government officials that the Government owed him money for financial engineering services rendered to it under the contract with Waterville.

In his claim to government officials, the accused who had no contract with government, claimed that, as part of the financial engineering services rendered, he managed to arrange €1,106,470,587 for the Government through the Bank Austria Creditans out of which he claimed was entitled to two per cent as financial engineering fees.

Investigations however, revealed that there were no such funds made available for the benefit of the country by Bank Austria as claimed by the accused.

Further investigations revealed that the accused had no contract with the Government to provide any services.

The only arrangement on financial engineering services the accused had was with Waterville Holdings Ltd which services had been fully paid for and acknowledged by the accused in a termination agreement.

GNA