The Court of Appeal in Accra, will on January 12 next year, fix a date to deliver judgement on the criminal appeal filed by the State against businessman, Mr. Alfred Agbesi Woyome.
Consequently, the three-member panel made up of Justices Victor Ofoe (presiding), Francis Korbieh and Lawrence Ladzagla Mensah, yesterday gave the Attorney-General’s Department up to December 22, to respond to Woyome’s written submission.
Mr. Ken Anku, lead counsel for Woyome told The Ghanaian Times that his client had already responded to the A-G’s written submission, and that it was now the turn of the State, led by Mrs. Yvonne Atakorah Obuobisa, Acting Director of Public Prosecutions, to do same.
He said the court would not call for witnesses, but go straight and deliver judgement, after carefully and thoroughly studying the various written submissions of the two parties before it.
The Attorney-General’s Department has appealed to the court to overturn the judgement on March 12, of an Accra High Court, presided over by Mr. Justice John Ajet-Nassam, acquitting and discharging Woyome on two counts of “defrauding by false pretence and causing financial loss to the State”.
The businessman was accused of defrauding the state to the tune £22,129,411.74 being two per cent of the amount of £1,106,470,587.00 as financial engineering fees he was charging on the amount he had raised from Bank Austria Creditanstalk.
Based on that claim, the Ministry of Finance is said to have paid him a total amount of GHS57,283,480.59 and the A-G’s investigation revealed that Woyome’s claim was false.
But the Accra High Court set him free because the prosecution failed woefully to prove beyond all reasonable doubt, the guilt of Woyome, as well as failing to call some material witnesses such as Mrs. Betty Mould-Iddrisu, former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Mr. Ebo Barton-Odro, former Deputy Minister of Justice, and others to testify.
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