The court further ruled that Mr. Donkor is still qualified to serve as a director of a bank or any financial institution or other body corporate.

The action was brought by Mr. Donkor, the founder and main promoter of CAL Bank (then Continental Acceptances Limited), following a directive issued by the Bank of Ghana to CAL Bank in 1996 which instructed CAL to remove Mr. Donkor who was then the Managing Director from his position as Managing Director and a member of the Board of Directors, stating that he "was no longer acceptable to the Central Bank as a director of any financial institution," based on a provision in the Banking Law 1989 which provided that a director shall be disqualified from a bank if he suspends payment to, or compounds with his creditors or is convicted by a court of competent jurisdiction of any offence involving fraud, dishonesty or moral turpitude.

The purported disqualification was based on allegations of financial impropriety brought against Mr. Donkor by the Serious Fraud Office in 1996. These allegations were later dismissed by an Accra Tribunal for lack of evidence to prosecute .Mr. Donkor who later settled all the debts on which the said disqualification was based.

In September 2005 before CAL Bank was listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange, Mr. Donkor who is the largest individual shareholder of the Bank, sought to have his interests represented on the Board of Directors of CAL but management of CAL refused stating the Bank of Ghana directive of 1996 as their reason for the refusal. Following this response, Mr. Donkor also enquired from the Bank of Ghana, given the lapse of almost ten years, whether he was allowed to serve as a director of a financial institution.

The Bank of Ghana then stated that it still relied on the directive issued by the then Governor and therefore he was still disqualified by operation of law. It was for this reason that Mr. Donkor sought to have the matter settled in court.

The issue before the court was whether the Bank of Ghana had acted ultra vires by disqualifying Mr. Donkor without a Court Order and whether the said disqualification, if valid, could be in perpetuity.

The court's ruling was based on the Companies Code which provides that any disqualification of a director should be made by a court. The Bank of Ghana was therefore wrong in issuing the said directive for disqualification in 1996 without a Court Order and also for the continued operation of that disqualification. The Bank of Ghana's actions were therefore wrongful and void.

The court's decision sets landmark precedent for the fact that the Bank of Ghana although the regulatory body for financial institutions did not have an unfettered discretion in disqualifying persons from managing financial institutions. However, this case was based on the 1989 Banking Law and it would be interesting to see how future cases on disqualification will be handled under the new Banking Act of 2003.