THE LOOTER GOVERNMENT AND THE LOOTEE
THE LOOTER GOVERNMENT AND THE LOOTEE, WOYOME KNOW AMIDU HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE LOOTED PUBLIC PURSE
BY MARTIN A. B. K. AMIDU
I heard Alfred Agbesi Woyome, accuse me on Citi News on 24th November 2016 at the 5.30 pm news of having ordered or authorized the Ministry of Finance to pay him part of the GHC51.2million unconstitutionally looted by the incumbent Government for Woyome. I also heard him allege that I ordered or authorized a September 2011 payment of the loot which the Ministry of Finance paid to Woyome by transfer into his accounts. These spurious allegations are untrue and symptoms of mental exhaustion and stress coming from the lootee of the public purse.
The fact that I had nothing to do with the authorizations written to the Ministry of Finance to pay any portion of the looted public purse to Woyome was already determined finally in the declarations made by the Supreme Court on 29th July 2014 against the looter Government represented by the Attorney General and the lootee Woyome with Austro-Invest Limited.
The looter, the incumbent Government of Ghana, itself set up the “Commission of Enquiry Into Payments From Public Funds Arising From Judgment Debts & Akin Matters (2012/C.I 79)” of a sole Justice of its own choice. The independent Justice and his Commission found that I had nothing to do with the looted public purse. The looter Government accepted the recommendations of the report of the Commission as disclosed by the “White Paper On The Report of The Commission of Enquiry....(2012/C.I. 79)” at pages 3 and 4. The Commission of Enquiry commended me so highly that the incumbent looter Government which set it up, probably in the hope of finding anything against me, disgracefully tried to interfere with the Commission’s findings and recommendations commending my honesty and integrity in the matter.
I also heard Woyome speaking on his own behalf and on behalf of this incumbent looter Government accusing me of having something to do with interest payments on the looted monies which the Chief State Attorney Samuel Nerquaye Tetteh recommended through Amma Gaisie, the Solicitor General, to me in a memorandum dated 3rd November 2011 for approval and which I refused to approve with instructions that the matter be resolved in the Court. But the same Commission of Enquiry appointed by this very incumbent looter Government did not find that I had anything to do with the proposed interest payments as I was indeed the person who aborted that attempt further to loot the public purse.
The Commission specifically found and established that: “i. Either through inadvertence or pure mischief through connivance, both the Chief State Attorney, Samuel Nerquaye Tetteh who was charged with the defence of the suit in the trial court,...did not scrutinize the process filed before them with judicious eyes. ...The bank accounts of Mrs. Nerquaye Tetteh, the wife of the Chief State Attorney, was later found by the Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO) to have ballooned by the payment into it of the sum of GHC400, 000.00 by Alfred Agbesi Woyome after
the deal had become successful...”. (See page 3 of the White Paper whose findings and recommendations were reluctantly accepted by the looter Government at page 4 thereof).
In addition to the decision and order of the Supreme Court dated 29th July 2014, the recommendations and findings of the Commission of Enquiry have become binding judgments of the High Court unless reversed under the Constitution. One would, therefore, have expected that if the lootee Woyome was not the surrogate of the incumbent looter Government, then the incumbent Government would have come to my defence because it accepted the Commission of Enquiry Report in a White Paper. Instead, in his interviews on television and radio, the President continues to accuse me of falsehood and goads Woyome and his Ministers on to insult me via the electronic media for defending the Constitution.
It is clear where the incumbent Government’s support lies in the Woyome matter. The lootee, Woyome, and the incumbent looter Government succeeded in their aim to do whatever it took for the Supreme Court to reverse its decision and order dated 16th November 2016 in preventing me from examining Woyome orally on oath on 24th November 2016. Woyome did not only file an application to discharge or reverse the order for his examination at 9.52 am on the 23rd November 2016. He followed this up by filing at 1.30 pm an application for the stay of proceedings to disable me from examining him the next morning. It was not accidental that the Government which argued against my application to examine Woyome orally on oath on 10th November 2016 was this time round made the 2nd Respondent in surrogate Woyome’s applications. Common sense makes such tricks quite obvious to the ordinary person.
Woyome’s outbursts on Citi News and other radio stations appear to be contributions of someone who is mentally exhausted, extremely tired, and frustrated, and his comments ought to be ignored. However, the files on this loot of the public purse by the incumbent Government for its lootee and surrogate, Woyome, are in Government custody and one expects a dignified Government to have told the public by now that its surrogate is pathologically adverse to the truth, especially when he associates me with any payments of the looted public purse or any proposed interest. The incumbent Government knows this is untrue, as its own Commission of Enquiry has found.
I have responded to similar spurious allegations of complicity in the loot in the media and on my website, martinamidu.com in the past, but the media and the public are being hoodwinked by Woyome’s outburst and the incumbent Government’s overwhelming silence to set the records straight. The fact remains that the people of Ghana are enduring economic hardships now because of this incumbent looter Government of the public purse.
I entreat fellow citizens once more to read between the lines and come to their own justified conclusion that the only way the Republic and the people of Ghana can get their looted Woyome money back is to vote out this kleptomaniac looter Government and President on 7th December 2016. My constitutional mandate has been to pursue the refund of the looted monies as ordered
by the Court. But every single Ghanaian can also stand against the ongoing looting of the public purse. Use the representative democratic process and vote this looter Government out to have our GHC51.2million loot from Woyome back soonest after voting this President out on the 7th December 2016 elections.
Citizens, you have a choice to make. How much longer will we hear stories of inadvertence, mischief and connivance by an incumbent Government that strips the Republic’s coffers bare so that ordinary Ghanaians must suffer financial hardship? PUT GHANA FIRST and let us get our looted money back by voting the incumbent looter Government out on 7th December 2016.
Protect Ghana and the government purse by voting for a new President.
Martin A. B. K. Amidu
Analysis shows that the political elite of the new government uses the time between the first transition SONA and a change of government from one of the two political parties to make sure that it is their turn to squander public money, before the electorate switches governments. While the political elite are busy at the trough eating their turn from the public purse, political party cards and political affiliation matter more than citizenship of Ghana.
Kissi Agyebeng is so full of himself, he doesn’t see that by selectively appointing and giving higher ranks to some staff and neglecting others who think they deserve the same or better ranks he has antagonized several of his unlawfully appointed staff. How can he be parading a report which GNAT is contesting as reasons for his indispensability in the fight against corruption in Ghana? Especially when his OSP staff being paid in violation of Article 195 of the 1992 Constitution and Section 21 of Act 959 from the public purse are all ghost workers on the OSP payroll.
A PDF copy of my letter to the Minister of Finance, the Auditor-General, the Accountant-General, and the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament reproduced above as part of this rejoinder to demonstrate that the Government could not and cannot in the name of fighting corruption have paid any salary to any of the cronies and friends corruptly and unlawfully recruited and promoted by the OSP contrary to the 1992 Constitution. The reason the OSP relied on seconded staff under my tenure is fully explained in my petition to the Chairman of the Public Services Commission.
A PDF copy of my petition dated 31 August 2022 to the Chairman of the Public Services Commission, reproduced above as part of this rejoinder to demonstrate that the Government could not and cannot in the name of fighting corruption have paid any salary to any of the cronies and friends corruptly and unlawfully recruited and promoted by the OSP contrary to the 1992 Constitution.
By abusing its investigatory and prosecutorial powers and mandate, and by publishing the Labianca report, the Office of the Special Prosecutor has disabled the OSP from any fair and impartial investigation of outstanding matters in the complaint made by Frank Asare to the Office on 16 November 2021. This critique reveals the Labianca report to be contrary to the Constitution and insufficient grounds for consideration for the removal of public officers from office without a trial and conviction by a court of law, instead of a deliberate trial in the court of public opinion.
I have never been paid any money by any Government in my official capacity or because of my position as the Special Prosecutor as a judgment debt. Your intentional, malicious and deliberate defamatory words used to describe any payments to me of any part of the outstanding orders of the Court given on 4th September 2014 were understood by ordinary and right thinking members of the public to mean and you intended them to mean that the Government unlawfully had colluded with me in my capacity as the Special Prosecutor to dubiously pay me some money and other benefits resulting from Court orders.
The Office of the Special Prosecutor is Ghana’s new anti-corruption agency. With its prosecutorial powers, it is being seen by many as an expected solution to the problem of corruption in Ghana. However, the nation’s inability to adequately resource and guarantee the independence of law enforcement from politics has affected the fight against corruption over the years. Unless there is a change of attitude in practice, the Office of the Special Prosecutor Act may soon be seen by the public to be, like its predecessors, a delusion and not an achievement.
All citizens and public officeholders should know their obligations concerning banking transactions. I am sharing my most recent experience in this matter with the public as part of my prevention of corruption duty to let citizens know that the responsibility is upon citizens to instruct their bankers to return suspicious payments of public funds into their accounts. A Bank is under penal statutory responsibility to report suspicious transactions to the appropriate agency of Government and the customer is under a banking responsibility to call the Bank’s attention as soon as he notices any suspicious transactions or payment into his account or to give the Bank such standing instructions as will protect the account holder.
Thank you, Mr. Kweku Baako, for not allowing the matter of “the missing link” in the Woyome criminal saga to die a natural death for lack of any public voice. If the present Government was really bent on fighting corruption, there are other aspects of the Woyome case which it could pursue. One of the problems faced by some of the appointees of the current Government is the ability to go beyond the biased advice being proffered to them by senior public officers they inherited from the previous Government. Unfortunately, some officers who earned their mid-night promotions protecting the looting and covering up of the activities of the previous Government, are still at work. They have no interest in pointing out residual matters in the Woyome case – and in the end, it will depend on the personal commitment, the energy and industry granted by the present Government to fish out those “missing link” matters.
Does the Africa Court have jurisdiction to hear a purely civil case between a private citizen, Amidu, against the Republic as a nominal defendant and another private citizen, Woyome, by admitting Woyome as the applicant and substituting the Republic as the defendant before the Africa Court? Until execution is completed I am still the plaintiff and the case continues to be a civil case between two private citizens. Woyome’s present scheme of using the side door to eliminate me from the case at the Africa Court allows him to procure sweet victory under the regime of President Nana Akufo Addo, and will mean that the people of Ghana will lose the benefit of the judgment I obtained against Woyome at the Supreme Court.
In this affidavit I contend that the Government of Ghana’s interest is not in enforcing the order of the Supreme Court. Instead, the incumbent Government represented by the Attorney General is merely giving the appearance of enforcing the order of the Court while simultaneously entering into a confidentiality agreement with Alfred Agbesi Woyome as Executive Chairman, a director, and sole shareholder of Anator Holding. This discreet agreement aims to facilitate Woyome’s ability to refund the monies ordered by this Court. Such actions by the incumbent Government negate the letter and spirit of Article 2 of the 1992 Constitution and the enforcement jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. Moreover, I maintain that under Article 2 of the 1992, when the Attorney General is being sued for unconstitutional conduct, and a declaration of unconstitutionality is made against the Attorney General, it will be a negation of the letter and spirit of the Constitution to say that the public interest Plaintiff who has prosecuted the action has no capacity to ensure proper and effective execution of the order, even when the Attorney General’s actions are not of substance for purposes of enforcing the decisions and order of the Supreme Court.
Woyome has accused me in the media of having ordered or authorized the Ministry of Finance to pay him part of the GHC51.2million that the incumbent Government unconstitutionally looted for him. However, the fact that I had nothing to do with the authorizations written to the Ministry of Finance to pay any portion of the looted public purse to Woyome was already determined finally in the declarations made by the Supreme Court on 29th July 2014. Moreover, the Government’s own “Commission of Enquiry Into Payments From Public Funds Arising From Judgment Debts & Akin Matters (2012/C.I 79)” commended my honesty and integrity in the matter. The media and the public are being hoodwinked by Woyome’s outburst and the incumbent Government’s overwhelming silence to set the records straight. Citizens, you have a choice to make. How much longer will we hear stories of inadvertence, mischief and connivance by an incumbent Government that strips the Republic’s coffers bare so that ordinary Ghanaians must suffer financial hardship? PUT GHANA FIRST and let us get our looted money back by voting the incumbent looter Government out on 7th December 2016. Protect Ghana and the government purse by voting for a new President.
I believe that the application for stay of proceedings is only intended to subvert the order of the Supreme Court dated 16th November 2016 for the examination of the 3rd defendant/judgment debtor/applicant, Alfred Agbesi Woyome, who has since the ruling of the Supreme Court on 16th November 2016 stated in several interviews on radio, television and via electronic media that he considers himself being persecuted by the Supreme Court and that he would do everything to the last drop of his blood to prevent the Court from enforcing the order of 16th November 2016 for his examination
Government is purposefully deceiving the electorate that efforts are being made to retrieve the unconstitutional loot by Woyome jointly with Austro-Invest, the client of Lithur-Brew and Co, a law firm in which the Attorney General was a partner. Woyome’s part-payment in a cheque drawn by Woyome in favour of the Economic and Organized Crime Office, which was not a party to the action or the judgment creditor, cannot be a cheque in part payment of the unconstitutional monies ordered by the Court to be refunded to the Republic. Unfortunately, the Government as the leading looter has put obstacles in our way in enforcing the orders of the Court. Do not be hoodwinked by electioneering ploys. Let us defend the 1992 Constitution by voting for a new President on 7th December 2016 to get our money back.
The drunken tantrums cowardly thrown by Omane Boamah show the shallowness of his education, understanding, and lack of diligence and industry in researching matters on which he is to defend the Government in public. Simple common sense would have informed the almighty Minister of Communications who sought to take over Multi TV/Joy FM to insult me that in arguing my case before the Supreme Court on 10th November 2016, I referred the Court to its own unanimous decision given in my favour on 29th July 2014. I am constrained from making any further comment on the case apart from calling the public’s attention to the final decision of the Supreme Court, a public record, in respect of Austro-Invest Management Services Limited which is admitted to have been the client of Lithur-Brew and Co, the firm of the current Attorney General.
I would like to assure all public spirited Ghanaians that should I be given the opportunity to examine the Judgment Debtor, Alfred Agbesi Woyome, in Court the good people of Ghana will hear and see the beneficiaries of the unconstitutional judgment debt in the NDC and this Government. Gargantuan crimes were indeed committed as I stated in 2012. Corruption is trying to prevent the public from hearing the whole story from the horse’s own mouth. I challenge the honesty and integrity of the President and the Government to allow the examination of its financier, the Judgment Debtor, Alfred Agbesi Woyome to proceed without hindrance if they have nothing to hide.
Commonsense should have warned the Plaintiff/Respondent that an ordinary bench of this court hearing his Writ of Summons and Statement of Case will have no jurisdiction to declare the ruling of the review bench in Amidu (No 3) v Attorney General, Waterville (BVI) Ltd & Woyome (No 2) (2013-2014) 1 SCGLR 606 null and void or in any other manner attempt to review same under the smokescreen of exercising any original jurisdiction in this action.
The nature of the reliefs sought by the Plaintiff, Abdulai Yusif Fansah Muhammed, from the Supreme Court in this action are clearly stated on three of them to be for the benefit of Alfred Agbesi Woyome and the exoneration of the Attorney-General who unconstitutionally paid the judgment debt to Woyome. Why has the Plaintiff decided to join them as the 1st and 2nd Defendants in this action to create the impression that his interest diverges from theirs? Are they really Defendants or is the Plaintiff their surrogate? That is the answer to look from their responses to the Plaintiff’s case.
This rejoinder condemns in no uncertain terms the unconstitutional and unethical conduct of the Deputy Attorney General, Dr. Dominic Ayineh, in scurrilously abusing the Court and the Judge that tried the Woyome case and also for the contempt of scandalizing the judiciary as a whole in the media, and in spite of the pendency of an appeal in the Court of Appeal filed by the office of the Attorney General.
Response to Tony Lithur's dare for me to seek redress. I question how Lithur, Brew & Co can in spite of the overwhelming evidence created and filed in the High Court by itself say with a straight face that I am dragging a fellow practitioner’s reputation so publicly into disrepute based on conjectures, and rather impugning my reputation for unethical and irresponsible conduct. I am too experienced to take the bait of the line of least resistance favourable to Lithur, Brew & Co being suggested to the innocent public when there are more effective and punitive remedies available to me at an appropriate time and place of my choosing.
Response to GBEVLO-LARTEY ATTACKS AMIDU article. I am yet to read a retraction from the Daily Guide but it is important the public knows that I was never informed by the Daily Guide that it had any story from Gbevlo-Lartey that it intended to publish the next day. Samuel Buabeng has already on his own and in my defence given a fitting reply to Gbevlo-Lartey on his Facebook wall which I endorse entirely even though I would have advised him to wait awhile. Consequently, I will be letting him and the public down by still refusing to react for fear of any fight. The intention to overwhelm me with personal and sometimes selfishly-motivated attacks by agents of Government and the NDC will not succeed.
Response to denial by the Attorney General, Mrs Brew Appiah-Oppong, that she did not selectively file an entry of judgment omitting the declarations in respect of the then Attorney General and the fact that the declaration against Woyome was stated to be with Austro-Invest. Soft copy of relevant Woyome Application filed by Martin Amidu on 26 October 2014
It is a fact that Lithur, Brew and Co were lawyers for Austro-Invest Management Ltd, a foreign company which was a joint beneficiary with Woyome in the over GH₵51million unconstitutionally paid by the NDC Government through its financier, Woyome. The Attorney General, Mrs. Marrieta Brew Appiah-Oppong, was a partner in Lithur, Brew and Co at the time the NDC Government unconstitutionally paid the over GH₵51million to the joint beneficiary interest of Austro-Invest and Woyome. My contention is therefore that she does not have the impartiality to handle on behalf of the Republic of Ghana any case involving Alfred Agbesi Woyome.
The purpose of this rejoinder is to state that the impression the Daily Graphic's online article of 15 January 2014 has conveyed to the public about my role in any payments to Mr. Woyome is not borne out by the records before the Supreme Court or any official records. If anybody has any evidence that I authorized, endorsed, or facilitated the payments to Woyome then who can better give primary evidence on such a material fact than me. I accordingly welcome an invitation from the Attorney-General and/or Mr. Osafo Buabeng, lawyer for Woyome, if my role is important to either case.
Review applications pertaining to Woyome and Isofoton judgment cases.
Writ that was submitted to invoke original jurisdiction.
Document relating to Waterville Woyome judgment.
Exercising right as a citizen of Ghana pursuant to Articles 2 and 130 of the 1992 Constitution to file a Writ No. J1/15.2012 and a Statement of Case as Plaintiff at the Supreme Court asking for a number of declarations of nullity and consequential reliefs against: (1) the Attorney-General (2) Waterville Holdings (BVI) Limited (3) Austro-Invest Management Limited and (4) Alfred Agbesi Woyome for various actions and conduct on their part in the making and payment of claims against the Government.
On Monday, 4th June 2012 the High Court trying the Woyome case was given the assurance that the trial will commence on 5th June 2012. On 5th June 2012 the charges against the accused persons were discontinued by the entry of a nolle prosequi and all the accused discharged. Alfred Agbesi Woyome was alone rearrested and charged with two offences and the case adjourned. This article examines actions taken.
With all the delays, the impression is being created that Government is deliberately buying time by pushing the Woyome trial to after the legal vacation in October 2012 and thus avoiding the conclusion of the trial before the elections in December 2012.