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UK gives Zim judicial system thumbs up: Comments

by Moyo Roy
27 Apr 2011 at 17:41hrs | Views
Following The Herald's report that A UNITED KINGDOM court has given Zimbabwe - a sisterly judicial system - the thumbs up in the case in which businessman Jayesh Shah is claiming US$300 million damages from an international bank.

Shah is suing HSBC Bank for financial losses after the bank, in 2006-07, reported his request to transfer US$28 million from his account with the bank to another account in Geneva - to the Serious Organised Crime Agency on suspicion of money laundering.

The case can now go to trial after the Court of Appeal in the UK ruled recently in favour of Shah.

HSBC Bank had brought an application seeking security for costs of 282 607 British pounds from Shah.

The bank had claimed that if litigation went ahead it was not going to be able to recover their costs against Shah.

For that reason the bank wanted Shah to pay costs before he could have a right to prosecute his claim in the British Courts.

Some Zimbabweans decided to add their weight on the story, here are some of the comments that were posted below the story:

Chabvongodza: When a white man says something positive he is made the headline, you see how important are the whites, what a pity, double standards and in this case sanctions will be temporarily forgotten and let the white say something bad and the debate on sanctions is rekindled. Is that how politics works, I wonder

Mandla: We've been knowing this..

Gustav Graves: Off course the Herald is on the correct path to celebrate the accord that has been given to the Zimbabwe judiciary system by a sister council - a council of such high calibre. I feel the HSBC lawyers had it on very bad grounds that their swift stance of trying to subvert a purely economic issue into a political one would sail the day under the British legal system. Shame on them for their poor strategising and nothing else. I mean hey, even i of a modest legal background would have known better. Anyway, what is the material impact of having a potential bad debtor of BP282,067 to the HSBC balance sheet? Especially if we have to consider the billions in bail out monies which these bankers got from state funds and are highly unlikely to repay them back from a value point of view. Is this not the case of the unfaithful servant who was padorned by his master for a huge debt he owed, only to hurry on to harrass his neighbour who owed him a paltry fee?

I applaude the learned judge for upholding good jurisprudence - we miss this at the United Nations I tell you.

Dr Solomon Guramatunhu: As an advocate I am of the opinion that the Zimbabwean judicial system is functional and the functions had been greatly undermined by the inclusion of procedural impropriety mechanisms imposed by the inclusive govt.

The businessman capitalising on this new twist in the politics made an attempt to facilitate the transfers in just the same way the likes of Mutumwa Mawere took advantage of that impasse.The HSBC was acting respecting ethics expected from that fraternity.According to the Mareva Injunction which still stand and is a lawful authority, remittances of monies outside jurisdiction is not supposed to be a lawful process.

The U.K. ruling therefore is a thumbs up.The dangers that existed lied in the ability to use irate judgements from South Africa at a time we are privatising our system that permit public procedural impropriety manipulations.

Njabulo: The pursuer of this case is very fortunate given the fact that the UK judiciary system is not impartial. It favours whites at the expense of blacks. The issue here could be that the claimant is financially sound. Thus the UK judiciary fraternity only protects those that are financially sound. For example, the law of privacy, which has not yet been passed and effected by Parliament, is a thorn in the flesh of the UK journalists at the moment. The judges at the moment are using their own discretion on a case by case bases.

The judges are giving inference to the EU law on privacy as a legal premise for their ratio decidendi or simply put 'the reason for deciding'. By dint of analogy, one could only conclude that their discretion in law of privacy is meant to protect the affluent whites at the expense of the poor blacks. It is very rare for a black person to instigate civil legal proceedings against a white person or organisation/ entity and win the case in the UK courts. Thus for policy reasons ,designated to favour the whites you hardly can win any case. In most cases they just shred your case papers. You need to know that UK laws are meant to favour whites, period: Njabulo - libertyatliberty@gmail.com


Source - Byo24News
More on: #HSBC, #Judicial