State selling two Woyome properties at GhC11.7m

The Supreme Court has given clearance to the State to proceed to sell two properties of the embattled businessman, Alfred Woyome.

The two properties to be sold for is valued at GHC11.7 million and comprise an executive building at Trassaco and a residential building at Caprice.

The total portfolio of properties set to be sold are two executive buildings located at Trassaco in Accra; the office complex of Anator Holdings, a company owned by Mr. Woyome; two residential buildings at Caprice and Abelemkpe, both suburbs in Accra, as well as a mining quarry owned by the judgement debtor in the Eastern Region of Ghana.

The five-member Supreme Court panel presided over by Justice Baffoe-Bonnie, having identified some conflict in respect to one of the executive buildings located at Trassaco in Accra ordering the valuation of same for the court to determine the forced sale value at its next sitting on the 16th of October, 2019.

In an off-record engagement with the Deputy Attorney General, Godfred Yeboah Dame after the hearing, he disclosed that the AG’s Department has received the valuation details in respect of the remaining properties identified by the State and he will be filing them before the court for a forced sale on them as well. It was his hope that at the next adjourned date, the entire process will be completed to bring the matter to a rest.

Background

A single Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Alfred Benin, on the 27th of June, 2019, ordered that several properties identified as belonging to the embattled businessman Alfred Woyome, be sold to offset some 51 Million Ghana Cedis judgement debt paid illegally to him by the state.

The state identified the properties owned by Mr. Woyome which are estimated at GHc 20 million that it believes could prove vital in retrieving the GH¢ 51.2 million judgement debt he received from the state unlawfully. The now defunct UT Bank has claimed some of the properties identified by the state as theirs. It was the claim of lawyers of the defunct UT Bank that Woyome, used the said properties as collateral for loans at the bank which he failed to pay back. Ownership of the properties according to UT Bank, based on the failure to pay back the loans, transferred to the bank automatically.

The state represented by the Deputy Attorney General, Godfred Yeboah Dame, argued that there was no evidence to show that the said properties were used as collateral by Woyome to secure loans from UT Bank. The properties, the state maintained, are owned by Mr. Woyome and therefore prayed the court to declare same as true to pave way for the state to sell them.

In his judgement, Justice Benin said he has concluded that the claim by UT Bank that Mr. Woyome used the two buildings at Trasacco as collateral for a loan is false as they did not provide any credible evidence to substantiate their claim. On the issue of the office complex of Anator Holdings, the Court held that all evidence point to the fact that they are indeed owned by Mr Woyome and not anyone else. Subsequently, the Court ordered that all the properties identified by the State should be sold in satisfaction of the judgement debt owed the State.