2016
SUPREME COURT
Ghana
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
The Supreme Court quashed the High Court's ruling dated June 1, 2015, holding that the High Court exceeded its jurisdiction by keeping the accounts frozen beyond one year and breached natural justice by freezing pre-existing funds without hearing the applicant. The reliance on an affidavit from a previous motion struck out for want of prosecution was deemed lawful.
RULING
ANIN YEBOAH JSC:-
The applicant herein has invoked our supervisory jurisdiction to quash a ruling of an Accra High Court, [Financial Division], dated the 1st of June 2015. The uncontroverted facts of this application appear to be very simple. The applicant is a limited liability company operating in this country. It operated three accounts at the Tower branch of Fidelity Bank, Ghana Limited. On 27/02/2014, the interested party herein (The Financial Intelligence Centre), in a letter, directed the applicant’s bank to freeze all the accounts of the applicant.
As the interested party is statutorily conferred with such authority, the bank complied to freeze all the three accounts of the applicant. According to the interested party, in an affidavit sworn to by one Mary Shireen Ofosu, an analyst of the Financial Intelligence Centre, the applicant on 20/02/2014 received an amount of US$43,569.45 from one Sue Batth-Tait in Canada. Prior to the 20/02/2014 the same Sue Batth-Tait had remitted the applicant US$33,999.00. The interested party’s officials questioned two directors of the applicant’s company; namely: DAVID OMARI and ISAAC BOATENG who according to the officials of the interested party could not provide credible information for the remittances and they therefore suspected the applicant company of money laundering. After the freezing order initiated by the interested party herein on 4/03/2014, it applied for and successfully obtained from the High Court, [Financial Division] Accra, a confirmation order freezing all the three accounts of the applicant in an ex parte application.
Not comfortable with the freezing of its accounts, the applicant company on 27/08/2014 filed a motion praying the court to set aside the freezing order granted against them. This application to defreeze the accounts was struck out for want of prosecution on 5/09/2014. Later, on 9/04/15, the applicant filed an application praying the same court to defreeze the accounts frozen by the same court on 5/03/2014, which was clearly over one year. The interested party herein opposed the application.
It did not file any comprehensive affidavit in answer to the motion but learned counsel made it clear to the learned judge that he would rely on the affidavit in answer filed earlier on in the motion which was struck out for want of prosecution on 5/09/2014. We shall consider this point later in this delivery.
In the course of hearing the application, the learned High Court Judge s