Joana Quaye
The legal battle between billionaire businessman, Richard Nii Armah Quaye, popularly known as RNAQ, and his wife, Joana Quaye, has taken a new twist as the woman has filed an application before a High Court seeking to stop him from selling off any of his properties pending the determination of an appeal against the court’s decision in a divorce proceeding.
The application is seeking to restrain him from selling, transferring, disposing of or in any way alienating shares in a long list of companies, luxury vehicles, and expensive properties until an appeal over their divorce settlement is finally determined by the Court of Appeal.
She is further asking the court to temporarily stop the ex-husband from selling any of the disputed assets and shares owned by the couple in various companies acquired during the course of the marriage in order to prevent the businessman from disposing of them before the Court of Appeal decides whether she is entitled to a larger share of the wealth acquired during their marriage.
Ms. Quaye lists a number of attention-grabbing catalogue of assets she wants temporarily injuncted, including shareholding interests in Quick Credit, Quick Angels, Waterfall Engineering, Tigon Entertainment, Ridge Medical Centre, CEQA Foods, and several other companies.
She also included a long list of luxury homes at Trasacco Estates, East Legon, Dansoman, and Mamprobi, alongside a fleet of high-end vehicles including a Rolls Royce Phantom, Bentley Coupe, Mercedes Benz G-Wagon, Range Rover Vogue, Range Rover Velar, and Lexus 4×4.
Joana Quaye argues that these assets were acquired during the subsistence of the marriage and, therefore, ought to be equitably distributed, and thus wants the court to restrain RNAQ from disposing or transferring them before the final determination of her appeal.
Contributions
Ms. Quaye, in her affidavit, explicitly detailed her contributions to the marriage, and the formation of the companies, dating as far back as 2002 when both parties had just completed secondary school, eventually culminating in marriage in 2010.
She claims she sacrificed her education, worked multiple jobs, and financially supported Richard Nii Armah Quaye’s studies and early entrepreneurial ambitions, including funding that contributed to the birth of Quick Credit Company Limited, now Bills Micro-Credit.
Relying on documents she had earlier tendered at the trial as exhibits, Joana Quaye indicated that in anticipation of their marriage, she opened a joint account with RNAQ at SG-SSB Ltd and subsequently, jointly invested the funds from that account in an investment transaction operated by Data Bank Ltd. This investment matured and was redeemed by the couple in 2008, and was given to RNAQ who utilised it to fund his travel to the United Kingdom in 2008 to pursue further education in Accounting.
Ms. Quaye further avers that a year after they had gotten married, in 2011, they jointly set up Quick Micro Credit and Investment Limited which was unilaterally renamed Bills Micro Credit by RNAQ.
She said together with RNAQ, she was an original shareholder in Quick Micro Credit and Investment Limited. She was also, together with RNAQ, the only two directors of the company.
However, without her knowledge or consent, RNAQ altered the records of the company by removing Joana Quaye as both director and shareholder of the company around 2021.
She alleges that RNAQ admitted this under cross-examination in the course of the trial of the divorce case.
She, therefore, avers that the “conclusions of the learned judge were arbitrary, discriminatory and a complete departure from the principles governing the equitable distribution of marital property upon the dissolution of marriage.”
Ms. Quaye contends that the formation of Quick Credit and their joint ownership of shares in that company was “the springboard for RNAQ’s wealth and acquisition of various properties by him”. According to her, RNAQ used Quick Credit and Quick Angels to acquire other companies. He also “deployed the companies as a vehicle for the acquisition of various immovable and movable properties.”
She claimed that most of the vehicles acquired during the marriage are in the name of companies owned by RNAQ and other companies which are in turn owned by companies set up during the subsistence of the marriage.
Constitutional Rights Violations
Her affidavit raised serious procedural and constitutional questions about the original divorce judgment, arguing that the full written judgment was unavailable for more than three months and only surfaced after her constitutional right of appeal had expired.
She argues that there appeared to be “two versions” of the judgment, one containing the final orders and another containing the reasons for the orders released after the expiry of the three-month period within which she was entitled to appeal, a situation she says violated her constitutional rights.
She laments that if her new lawyers, Dame & Partners, had not promptly appealed when the full judgment was not available, she would have suffered irremediable damage.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak