2004
SUPREME COURT
GHANA
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
The Supreme Court of Ghana (majority opinion by Professor Modibo Ocran, JSC) reviewed an appeal by Tsatsu Tsikata challenging the Court of Appeal’s decision upholding the High Court’s rejection of a submission of no case. Tsikata had been charged on three counts under section 179A(3)(a) of the Criminal Code for wilfully causing financial loss to the State and a fourth count under SMCD 140 for misapplying public property. The case arose from a 1991 GNPC guarantee of a Caisse Française loan to Valley Farms and GNPC’s 1996 payments after Valley Farms defaulted, as well as GNPC’s equity investment in Valley Farms. The Court recognized void-for-vagueness review but upheld section 179A(3)(a), clarified the prima facie standard for no-case submissions, construed "State" to include losses of GNPC, broadened "wilful" to include intentional recklessness, rejected ipso facto loss, and emphasized Board-approval and statutory-object constraints. The majority affirmed, holding Tsikata has a case to answer on all counts; Justice Atuguba dissented, finding no prima facie case.
JUDGMENT
PROFESSOR MODIBO OCRAN, JSC.
INTRODUCTION.
This case came before us by way of an appeal from the Judgment of the Court of Appeal, delivered on 27th November 2003, in which the latter court upheld the rejection by a High Court of a motion of submission of no case made after the close of the prosecution’s case. The appellant was arraigned before the High Court on three counts of wilfully causing financial loss to the state, contrary to section 179A(3)(a) of the Criminal Code, 1960(Act 29), as amended; and on a fourth count of intentionally misapplying public property, contrary to section 1(2) of the Public Property Protection Decree, 1977(SMCD 140).
Counsel for the Appellant and the Director of Public Prosecution have obliged us respectively with “Submissions On Behalf of Appellant” and “Statement of Case by the Prosecution/Respondent”, along with a string of local and foreign judicial opinions to buttress their cases. The submissions by Appellant’s Counsel were rather detailed, and actually amounted to submissions within submissions. Nonetheless, because the liberty of his client is at stake, we will accord them the detailed consideration they deserve.
GROUNDS OF APPEAL ;
The Appellant has filed nine grounds of appeal against the decision of the Court of Appeal delivered on 27 November 2003. By regrouping and dealing with some of the grounds of appeal together in the Submission on Behalf of the Appellant, his Counsel implicitly acknowledges that there is some overlap between the various grounds. Nonetheless, we will attempt as far as possible to deal with all aspects of the Grounds of Appeal raised by Counsel under one head or another. Rather than setting out the grounds of appeal seriatim, we state each ground or related grounds of appeal separately, followed immediately by our consideration and holding on the matters raised therein, before moving on to deal with the next ground of appeal.
GROUND(A).
In Ground (a), Appellant’s Counsel states that “the Court of Appeal erred in using a repealed law as the basis for its failure to enforce Article 19(5) of the Constitution when the charges against the accused were not brought under that law.”
Article 15(5) of the Constitution essentially prohibits the creation of and punishment for retroactive crimes. Counsel’s submission in this regard is a reference to the portion of the Judgment of the Court of Appeal in which Justice Amonoo-Monney took note of the argument of the Director of Public Prosec