The Vice President of Groupe Nduom, Nana Ofori Owusu says the Court of Appeal’s dismissal of the Bank of Ghana’s appeal which challenged the jurisdiction of the High Court to hear the suit filed by GN Savings and Loans over the revocation of its license paves the way for justice.
Following the legal victory on Monday, Mr. Owusu told Citi News “we are going back to the High Court for GN Savings and Loans to get justice in this matter.”
“We believe in the court and we want to be able to have our day in court to make our case because in the Appeals Court, it could have been there for months and months without our case being heard,” he noted.
Shareholders of the Savings and Loans Company in September 2019 dragged the Bank of Ghana, Finance Ministry, the Receiver and the Attorney-General to court to challenge the revocation of its license.
The entity had earlier been downgraded from a universal Bank to a Savings and Loans Company.
The Bank of Ghana has since then unsuccessfully challenged the jurisdiction of the High Court to hear the case.
The Court of Appeal yesterday, June 22, 2020, dismissed the Bank of Ghana’s second appeal against the High Court hearing the matter.
Background
In October 2019, the Bank of Ghana and the Attorney-General raised a preliminary legal objection to the case brought by Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom and two other shareholders of GN Savings and Loans Limited.
In the objection, the Bank of Ghana and the Attorney-General argued that the High Court has no jurisdiction to hear the complaint which is challenging the revocation of GN Savings’ licence.
According to the Attorney-General and the Bank of Ghana’s lawyers, the only lawful forum for resolving the Applicants’ concerns is the Ghana Arbitration Centre.
In December 2019, the Presiding High Court judge, Justice Gifty Adjei-Addo, dismissed the legal objection as frivolous and without merit.
She then ordered the Bank of Ghana, the Attorney-General and the Receiver of GN Savings to file their defences by January 17, 2020.
The Bank of Ghana and the Attorney-General failed to file their defence on January 17, 2020, as directed by the court.
Rather, the Bank of Ghana appealed the High Court’s decision. It also filed an application at the High Court for a stay of the High Court’s proceedings pending the determination of the appeal.
Lawyers for Dr. Nduom again opposed the application for stay of proceedings, arguing that it was a mere ploy to delay the proceedings as the Bank of Ghana has not demonstrated that some exceptional circumstances exist to justify a stay.
The application for stay of proceedings was accordingly dismissed as without merit.
By this time the case had reached mid-March 2020.
CNR
