The Supreme Court has rejected a ¢1.27 billion judgment debt claim from the state by NDK Financial Services.

The apex court rather awarded an amount of ¢14,689 as judgment debt to NDK Financial Service.

This has enabled the state to save some huge amount of money.

Presided over by Chief Justice, Justice Kwesi Anin Yeboah, a five-member panel of the Supreme Court asked the state to pay interest at the prevailing rate from November 28, 2014, to the date of payment to NDK.

The panel included Justice Jones Dotse, Justice Paul Baffoe-Bonnie, Justice Nene Amegatcher and Justice Sule Gbedegbe (retired) said

Meanwhile, the full details of the court proceedings, according to the Chief Justice, would be ready on or before June 4, 2021.

Background

Accounting firm, PwC, was earlier appointed to establish the veracity of the over ¢1.2 billion claims made by NDK Financial Services Limited against the government through the Ministry of Energy.

The state represented by the Attorney-General and the private firm was then ordered by the court to prepare legal accounts for the auditing firm to work with.

The Supreme Court’s order followed an application by the AG, maintaining that the state had fulfilled all financial obligations to NDK with regard to certain payments and interests based on the court’s order.

In March 2019, when the parties appeared before the court, then-Deputy Attorney General, Godfred Yeboah Dame told the court that as far as the government is concerned, it has already complied with the judgment of the Supreme Court, but NDK continued to  make substantiated’ claims for more money.

According to him, “NDK through a process of categorizing the judgment debt into ‘ascertained’ and ‘unascertained’ parts, has been persistently making claims for humongous sums from the applicant herein, albeit totally unjustified.”

Mr Dame argued that “in the view of the state implies that the sum of ¢867,441.5 plus interest at the agreed rate of 6.5% per month calculated at the close of each day and payable at the end of every month from April 1, 2009, at the end of every month from April 1, 2009, till the date of final payment”.

But, counsel for NDK, Alfred Bannerman Williams, kicked against the application.

According to him, it “seeks to truncate the execution of the court’s order.”

He also challenged the ‘inherent jurisdiction of the Supreme Court based on which the AG had filed the application.