Areeba Case Adjourned

By William Yaw Owusu

Friday, 22 June 2007
THE Commercial Court in Accra yesterday adjourned to July 3, the case in which Richmond Aggrey, a Ghanaian businessman, is claiming 20 per cent shares in Scancom Limited, operators of Areeba mobile phone service.

Mr Aggrey, former Vice Chairman of Areeba, is suing the telecommunication giant together with Investcom Consortium Holdings S.A. of Beirut, Lebanon, who are majority shareholders in Areeba, as well as Grandview Mana-gement of Texas, United States to claim his shares.

When the case was called, Mr Benson Nutsukpui, counsel for Areeba told the court, presided over by Justice Henry Kwofie, that they had filed a supplementary affidavit opposing Grandview’s application for interlocutory injunction to restrain Investcom and Mr Aggrey from going ahead to London for arbitration.

Mr Thaddeus Sory, counsel for Grandview who was ready to move the application, then asked for an adjournment to enable him to advise his client on the "fundamental attachments" in Areeba’s supple-mentary affidavit

The court on May 31, dismissed an application for stay of proceedings pending an arbitration filed by Investcom.

The court on July 14, last year, granted Mr Aggrey an ex-parte application to restrain the defendants from going ahead to conclude a merger agreement with the MTN Company of South Africa.

Mr Aggrey had argued that "continuing and or concluding a merger with and/or acquisition of Investment LLC by MTN without taking into account and/or providing for the plaintiff’s 20 per cent shares in Scancom Limited will occasion the loss of his shareholding in the company by reason of the accrual of the rights of MT N Group as third party."

Following the development, Areeba filed an application on July 24, to strike out Mr Aggrey’s action " in part or whole" on the grounds that he failed to adhere to procedures in filing the application.

The trial court on October 20, however, ruled that the processes followed by Mr Aggrey in instituting the suit were proper and ordered Areeba to file its defence within 14 days.

Consequently, Areeba filed a notice of appeal to challenge the court’s ruling and another motion on notice to stay proceedings pending the appeal but Justice Kwofie dismissed it on December 8, and awarded ¢10 million cost against Areeba.

Areeba then went to the Court of Appeal to challenge the trial court’s decision and this was again dismissed by a three member panel on March 27, and awarded ¢5 million cost against the appellant.

The plaintiff then filed an application for judgement in default of a defence against Areeba but the second defendant filed an application for extension of time within which to file their defence.

The court on April 17, awarded ¢ 8 million cost against Areeba for the delay.

When the case was called, Mr Nutsukpui told the court, "we have this morning filed our statement of defence and we no longer wish to move our application for extension of time."

Yonny Kulendi, counsel for Mr Aggrey then said: "we are by this withdrawing our application for judgement in default".

The court then struck out the two applications for the case to take its normal course and again awarded five million cedis each against Areeba and Investcom in favour of the plaintiff on April 30.