[2004]DLSC2474 • October 27, 2004 • Supreme Court •
TSATSU TSIKATA vs. THE REPUBLIC
The appellant, Tsatsu Tsikata, as Chief Executive of Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), was charged with wilfully causing financial loss to the State by authorizing payments on behalf of GNPC to Caisse Francaise de Development for a loan defaulted by Valley Farms Company Ltd., a private company. The case involved allegations that the appellant misapplied public property by investing GNPC funds in a cocoa farming project outside GNPC's core petroleum operations.
read moreATUGUBA, J.S.C.:- I have had the advantage of reading the learned, brilliant and painstaking judgment of my brother Justice Professor Modibo Ocran J.S.C. It has assisted me a lot. It is a matter of great regret that I have not been able to share some of the conclusions he has reached on some of the issues involved in this case. The facts of this case can be fairly gleaned from the judgment of my brother Justice Professor Modibo Ocran and being mainly an appeal on questions of law, only such specific facts as are germane to the specific legal questions raised, are necessary. There has been extensive fighting on constitutional issues, but in view of the conclusion I have reached, it is not necessary to grapple with them. It is a sound principle of constitutional law, owing to the sensitive nature of issues of Constitutionality, that if a case can properly go off on a non constitutional ground one should avoid the constitutional issue. Thus in ENNIN v. THE REPUBLIC (1976) 1 GLR...