After 21 years of unsuccessful pleas, the family of a Lebanese business tycoon, Wassef Sadallah Dakmak has resorted to the due process to recover its residential property at No 16 North Ridge Residential Area in Accra which it claims is being occupied illegally by the 31st December Women’s Movement. Fady Fatal Dakmak, son and lawful attorney of Wassef Sadallah Dakmak has filed a suit against the DWM at an Accra High Court seeking, among other reliefs, an order for the immediate recovery of the property from the defendant. The plaintiff, whose suit was filed on his behalf by Dery and Co, an Accra-based legal firm on Monday is also seeking a declaration that the occupation by the DWM of the said property since 1986 was wrongful. It is, therefore seeking an order for the immediate recovery of the property from the defendant as well as the payment of revenue by way of rent which would have accrued to the plaintiff if he had rented out the property to a third party from the date of the unlawful occupation by the defendant up to the date of final judgment. The plaintiff is further claiming an interest on any sum assessed to be due at the prevailing bank rate or as the court may deem fit from the date of occupation of the property by the defendant to the date of final payment. “In the past I used to beg or ask for my house but now I’m demanding my house and I am demanding its immediate evacuation,” a distraught Fady said after the suit had been filed. “I want it before the 50th anniversary of Ghana’s independence and that’s my right. I’ve been waiting for far too long,” he added and further declared his intention to take the matter up at the international level if he did not succeed in Ghana. According to Fady, he had done everything possible, including lying on the ground t o beg former first lady, Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings who is also the President of the DWM and several petitions to the regimes of the Provisional National Defence Council, the National Democratic Congress, the National Patriotic Party for the recovery of the property but all to no avail. In a statement of claim, the plaintiff said his father acquired the said property from Jonathan Kojo Chinebrah by way of assignment which was evidenced by an instrument dated January 9, 1978. It said in 1986, some persons unknown to the plaintiff and purportedly acting for and on behalf of the PNDC took over the property on the powers of a decree known as the Transfer of Shares and Other Propriety Interests (Dakmak Group of Companies) Decree, 1979 (AFRCD 6). That action the statement said was contrary to the provisions of AFRCD 6 which ordered the confiscation of the property of the Dakmak Group of companies and not that of its directors. It further indicated that although AFRCD 6 did not or even purport to confiscate the plaintiff’s property, the PNDC in or about January 5, 1993 promulgated the Confiscated Assets (Removal of Doubt) Law, 1993 (PNDCL 325) in which it was enacted that the plaintiff’s afore said property which was never confiscated under the decree remanded confiscated to the state. Source: Daily Graphic