The office apartment in a building located between Golden Tulip and Opeibea House
The Edward Osei Boakye Trust Fund has been granted permission by the Supreme Court to retrieve more than 2.5milion dollars from Yaw Boakye, a son of late business mogul Edward Osei Boakye of Boakye mattress.
The trust fund established under the will of the late entrepreneur has the backing of the country’s apex court to collect the said amount, which is the sum of rent fee that Yaw Boakye used but failed to pay.
A five-member Supreme Court panel led by Justice Yaw Appau held unanimously that the Trustees should also take possession of an office apartment in a building located between Golden Tulip and Opeibea House.
On March 17, 2021, the Osei Boakye Trust Fund and Most Rev Dr Robert Aboagye Mensah, Most Rev Dr Joseph Osei Bonsu, Rt Rev Daniel Yinkah Sarfo filed a suit at the Supreme Court, praying the court to grant it certain reliefs.
Court details published by the state-owned Graphic newspaper and sighted by GhanaWeb indicates that the trustees, in an arrangement with Yaw Boakye after series of legal tussles, agreed to sublet the property to him for 15 years (from 2015 to 2030), which arrangement was recognized by the Supreme Court.
The agreement required Yaw Boakye to pay the cedi equivalent of $35,000 as monthly rent to the Trustees.
After paying the first year rent of $420,000, Yaw Boakye failed to meet the obligations, which compelled the Trustees to sue him at the court.
The trustees in the suit prayed an Accra High Court to grant them the property, compel Yaw Boakye to pay the rent and also award damages against Yaw Boakye for breaching the terms of the agreement.
The High Court ruled in 2019 that all occupants of the building should not pay rent to Yaw Boakye but rather to a certain account until some finality was brought to the case.
Yaw Boakye, who was not satisfied with the ruling, filed a number of applications at the High and Supreme Courts, all of which were dismissed.
Enforcement of the ruling – for payments to be made to a different bank account – became another challenge for which reason the Trustees went to the Supreme Court again to pray it to activate its powers to enforce its own decisions as enshrined under Article 124(4) of the 1992 constitution.
The Supreme Court granted the application with the premise that “re-opening matters already settled” at the Supreme Court was in line with the public policy of discouraging endless litigation.
“Anything otherwise may result in an untidy situation where lower courts will exercise the discretion whether the final orders of the Supreme Court referred for enforcement be carried out,” the court ruled.
“On the terms of the consent judgment, the undischarged payment obligations of the respondent (Yaw Boakye) which include payment of the cedi equivalent of $2,520,000 being the unpaid total rent due at monthly rate of $35,000 from May 1, 2016, to April 2022 and the recovery of the office space allocated to the applicants (trustees) by the respondent are enforceable by this court directly,” the court ordered.
The other members of the panel were Issifu Omoro Tanko Amadu – who read the judgment, with Justices Mariama Owusu, Avril Lovelace –Johnson and Clemence Jackson Honyenuga, as the other members of the panel.
