Audio Attachment:Listen to Hon. Joe Ghartey in an interview with Peacefmonline |
Peacefmonline.com can authoritatively confirmed that an NPP Member of Parliament and a former Cabinet minister in the erstwhile Kufuor administration has been questioned by the Criminal Investigations Department of the Ghana Police Service over the circumstances that led to the payment of GH�51.2 million in judgement debt to Alfred Agbesi Woyome, a businessman.
Hon. Joe Ghartey, NPP MP for Essikado-Ketan and former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice in the previous government honoured an invitation by the police a short while ago.
Peacefmonline is reliably informed that the NPP MP was questioned on Woyome and Waterville regarding his role in the saga at the Police Headquarters.
Speaking in an interview with Peacefmonline, the former A-G said he was asked about Mr Woyome to which he told the investigators that, "as far he is concerned, Woyome had no contract with the Government of Ghana" and that it was a "non-issue".
"I told them i never met him (Woyome). He never wrote to me, even when i was Attorney General, after i was Attorney General, before i became Attorney General, Hon. Joe Ghartey said.
The Essikado-Ketan MP, it would be recalled, was together with some former and current officials, named in an official investigative report undertaken by the Economic and Organised Crimes Office (EOCO) for various roles played in the Woyome judgment debt scandal.
Hon Joe Ghartey's role in the entire Woyome scandal was a letter he wrote legally abrogating a contract between the Government of Ghana and Waterville Holdings (BVI) Ltd because certain conditions to be fulfilled by the latter could not be met.
The former A-G wrote to Waterville on August 1, 2006, saying since the company was to engineer the funding for the CAN 2008 Project but failed to make that requirement, the contracts were cancelled.
He told peacefmonline that the police investigators also asked him about the infamous letter to Waterville.
"I said I wrote a four-page letter to them (Waterville) and its self explanatory terminating the MOU between Gov't of Ghana and Waterville, because it had conditions that Waterville had to fulfill before a formal contract could be signed...Waterville were unable to fulfill conditions precedent...and so the MOU was terminated," Hon Joe Ghartey stated.
To him, he was not intimidated in any way since he had nothing to hide and further described the atmosphere at the meeting as "warm and friendly".
Flashback
On August 1, 2006, the then A-G wrote to Waterville informing the company that since they could not meet the requirement/condition to engineer funding for the Project (reconstruction of stadia) the contracts were cancelled.
One of the conditions, according to the letter was that �It was understood by the reference to Clause 17 that the signing of the Contracts did not bring them into effect�.
Clause 17 of the Contracts stated among others that �This contract shall become effective at the date of the fulfillment of all of the following conditions�, which included signing of the contract by all parties, signing of the loan agreement relating to the contract by the Minister for Finance and Economic Planning, Etc.
Portions of the letter which was signed by Joe Ghartey states inter alia ��as was clearly understood by the Parties and stated in the Memorandum of Understanding, Waterville was to engineer the funding for the Project. Waterville stated that it has the capacity to engineer funding on behalf of the Government of Ghana from Bank Austria Creditanstalt AG. Vordere Zollamtasstrasse 131030 Vienna, guaranteed by the World Bank�s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) of 1818 H Street, NW, Washington, DC 20433, USA. This was the fundamental reason why the contract was awarded by the Government of Ghana�.
According to Hon Ghartey, while government was reviewing the status of the contracts, according to the letter which was sent to Mr. Andrea M. Orlandi of Waterville, �it came to the attention of cabinet that the primary condition that influenced the Government of Ghana in signing the Contracts had not been fulfilled. This condition, the engineering of the funding by Waterville, included bridge financing�.
�Having regard to the undeniable fact that time is of the essence, government of Ghana finds that it has no option but to raise the funding itself. Since you are unable to satisfy the fundamental condition that influenced government of Ghana�s decision being engineering the funding, cabinet cannot approve the contract and therefore the contract cannot be effective,� the letter added.
Source: Peacefmonline.com
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