2018
SUPREME COURT
GHANA
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
In this case, the Supreme Court exercised its supervisory jurisdiction to quash an order from the Court of Appeal which set aside an earlier High Court order for a stay of execution pending an appeal. The applicant, a statutory body, had successfully obtained a stay of execution from the High Court to prevent the interested party from accessing frozen accounts. However, the interested party motioned the Court of Appeal to set aside this stay. The Supreme Court found that the Court of Appeal lacked jurisdiction to entertain such a motion since the interested party had no pending appeal and thus should not have bypassed the procedural requirement of first approaching the lower court. The Supreme Court quashed the Court of Appeal order and upheld the High Court's decision. All Justices agreed with the ruling and reasoning provided by Yeboah, JSC.
RULING
YEBOAH, JSC:–
My Lords, the supervisory jurisdiction of this court has been invoked by the applicant herein to quash the order of the Court of Appeal dated the 9th of May, 2018 which order sought to set aside the order of Stay of Execution pending an appeal to the Court of Appeal. This application before us raises procedural matters which we have been called upon to resolve.
To appreciate our reasons for this ruling a brief summary of the facts would suffice. The applicant herein, a statutory body established under an act of parliament conducted an investigation of the interested party herein involving fraud, money laundering in the sum of US$200,000 and other related offences. The interested party was subsequently charged before the High Court, Accra in a criminal matter titled: REPUBLIC v NICHOLAS ANAMO suit №. FT/0063/2016. After going through plenary trial the interested party made a submission of no case to answer at the close of the case for the prosecution. The trial High Court upheld the submission and acquitted the interested party. The applicant lodged an interlocutory appeal against the ruling acquitting the interested party. The interested party, after his acquittal brought an application titled: NICHOLAS ANAMO vrs. EOCO as suit №. FT.050.2016 at the High Court, Accra for defreezing of his accounts which the court had by an earlier order frozen. The learned judge after hearing arguments granted the application and ordered the defreezing of the accounts.
The applicants feeling aggrieved by the order lodged an appeal at the Court of Appeal to set aside the order. Subsequent to the lodging of the appeal, the applicant filed a motion for stay of execution which was to prevent the interested party to have access to the accounts. This application was granted by the High Court after hearing both parties. The interested party feeling aggrieved by the order staying execution pending the appeal at the Court of Appeal, filed a motion at the Court of Appeal to vacate the order of the High Court staying execution. The motion at the Court of Appeal was headed thus:
“MOTION ON NOTICE TO SET ASIDE AN ORDER FOR STAY OF EXECUTION PENDING APPEAL”
The body of the motion or the relief sought was: “for the Applicant/ Respondent/Applicant herein humbly praying this Honourable Court to set aside an order for stay of Execution granted by the High Court on the 9th day of April, 2018”
The Court of Appeal granted the application which resulted in defreezing