The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has described the acquittal of Mr Alfred Woyome of all criminal charges as a show that the plot of create, loot and share continues unabated in the country.
In the view of the party, there is a clear vacuum in the national leadership in the fight against corruption, and that President John Mahama had not shown the needed guts to fight corruption.
“This is precisely why the presidency has seen the rise of civil society activism, protest and engagement in the fight against corruption,” the party declared at a press conference in Accra Thursday.
Nana Akomea , Director of Communication of NPP, who addressed the press conference, said as the three court judgements on the Woyome case showed the phenomenon of create, loot and share was still real in the country.
He expressed the hope that in this election year as this country was bleeding from the wounds of corruption, all Ghanaians would join hands and say a big no to corruption.
Background
On March 12, 2015, the High Court in Accra acquitted Mr Alfred Woyome of criminal charges brought against him by the Attorney General.
A year later, on March 10, 2016, the Appeals Court upheld the decision of the High Court to acquit Mr Woyome of the charges of defrauding by false pretence and causing financial loss to the state.
Both acquittals were secured on the ground that the state had not presented a convincing case to the courts.
NPP view
But speaking at the press conference, Nana Akomea said the NPP, like a vast number of Ghanaians, was not surprised at this turn of events regarding the criminal prosecution of Mr Woyome for the NDC government’s payment to him of taxpayers’ monies to the tune of Gh¢51.8m in 2010.
He said the twists and turns that led to Mr Woyome being paid ¢51.8m of taxpayers monies in 2010 clearly showed a deliberate pattern of high ranking NDC government officials, aided by highly placed public servants, to collude, connive and conspire with NDC connected individuals to misappropriate taxpayers’ monies.
He claimed that the elements of this classic plot of deliberate connivance and collusion were all present in the Woyome payout.
Mr Akomea further said in this particular case, President John Evans Atta Mills, according to a EOCO report, at some point, intervened and ordered that no public monies should be paid to Mr Woyome, and that ministers should go to court to defend the state.
High Court
He explained that the High Court also ordered in September 2010 that only a third of the monies should be paid to Mr Woyome pending the determination of the case.
The Director of Communications of NPP said despite these interventions, Ministers of State aided by highly placed public and civil servants still went ahead and managed to pay the colossal amount of GH¢51.8m (about $35 million) to Mr Woyome.
‘’One Supreme Court Judge, sitting in the civil case against Mr Woyome, in trying to make sense out of these payments could only surmise that the payments could only be understood as a grand scheme to create, loot and share taxpayers’ monies,’’ Nana Akomea declared.
He said it was sad to say the formula of ‘create, loot and share’, evident in the payment to Mr Woyome, had turned out to be just the dress rehearsal.
‘’ The same twists and turns which ended with the payment of massive amounts of tax payers' monies to Mr Woyome have since been replicated and runs through other massive fraudulent payments involving Waterville, GYEEDA, SADA and the latest episode of Smartty’s bus branding,’’ he stated.
He said the same pattern, the same collusion, the same conniving, the same sequence of events that made the Woyome payment possible could be seen in all of these other payments.
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