Friday, 29 March

$170m GPCG JD: Hold AG, foreign law firms accountable for 'deep sleep' – Kwaku Azar

Politics
Prof Kweku Azar

 

A US-based Ghanaian law lecturer, Professor Kwaku Azar, has said Ghana’s Attorney General Godfred Dame and two foreign law firms, Omnia Strategy and Volterra Fietta, who were contracted to challenge a London arbitration panel’s decision that the Ghana government should pay $170 million to Ghana Power Generation Company (GPCG) for terminating a contract, should be held accountable for the “inexcusable delay” that has cost the nation the opportunity to appeal the arbitration decision.

Feednews.com reported recently that the Commercial Court in London refused to allow Ghana to bring a belated challenge to an UNCITRAL award worth over US$134 million in favour of a power contractor, ruling that national elections and COVID-19 pandemic did not make the state’s delay reasonable.

The case started under Gloria Afua Akuffo, when she was the Minister of Justice with Godfred Yeboah Dame as her deputy.

State attorneys, including Helen Akpene Awo Ziwu, Anna Pearl Akiwumi Siriboe and Grace Oppong Dolphy in Accra, were also mentioned in the case as having failed to beat a 28-day deadline.

However, the state attorneys, together with Mr Dame, who took over from Gloria Afua Akuffo, went sleeping on the job, leading to a delay in contesting the judgment debt.

The result of that deep sleep is that poverty-stricken Ghana will be paying a whopping US$170 million in damages to the claimants; Ghana Power Generation Company (GPGC) located at 1 Airport Square Building, 7th floor, Accra.

Mr Dame and his subordinates’ attempts to hide behind the 2020 general election and the COVID-19 pandemic as excuses for the delay was rebuffed by the London court.

Reacting to this development, Prof Azar, in a statement, said: “We have an Attorney General’s Department. We have hired and paid two foreign law firms, Omnia Strategy and Volterra Fietta. Yet, we fell asleep and did not take advantage of the 28-day window afforded us to challenge the arbitration panel’s decision that we should pay $170M to GPCG for terminating a contract”.

“Omnia appeared in court on Day 25 to ask for an extension of 56 days. The court was kind to grant the extension but not for the full 56 days and set March 8, 2021 as the new deadline”.

“The government then found better things to do only to show up with a filing on April Fool’s day, this time represented by Volterra Fietta, with the excuse that it had been delayed by COVID and general elections”, the CDD Fellow said.

“The judge shut the door describing the delay as ‘significant and substantial’ and the excuses as ‘unreasonable and intrinsically weak’.”

“What is [this]?” Prof Asare asked.

“I just do not understand why we do these things to ourselves”.

“Setting aside the reasons for the termination, which require a separate inquiry, the Attorney General and the foreign law firms should be held accountable for this inexcusable delay that has potentially cost us the opportunity to appeal the arbitration decision”.

 

Source: classfmonline.com/Emmanuel Mensah