The Lusaka High Court has thrown out Judicial Review Proceedings, in which Atlas Mara was challenging the powers of the Police to investigate it.
This is in a matter in which Dr. Rajan Mahtani filed a complaint with the Zambia Police against Atlas Mara for Theft by Agent involving over $ 3.8 million dollars.
During the Police investigations at Atlas Mara, the bank rushed to Court and sued the Inspector General of Police and the Attorney General, seeking to stop the investigations using Judicial Review. The High Court refused to stop the investigations, whilst the Court of Appeal subsequently allowed the investigations to be stayed and sent the matter back to the High Court for hearing.
However, the High Court on 26th July, 2024 delivered a Ruling ending the Judicial Review matter, and allowing the Police to continue with their work in investigating the bank for theft and possibly prosecute it.
This means that Access Bank, which bought Atlas Mara and merged it with Access Bank in April this year to maintain only Access Bank as the trading bank, is now liable for investigations by the Zambia Police Service for Theft involving over US$3.8 million.
In agreeing with Dr. Mahtani who contended that the Court cannot grant the relief whose aim is to stop or abort criminal investigations, the High Court has dismissed the entire Judicial Review matter. High Court Judge M.M. Bah-Matandala ruled that:
“In sum, the application for judicial review is determined in finality, as it has the potential of preempting the criminal investigation.”
In accordance with the decision of the Constitutional Court in the case of Bowman Lusambo vs Attorney General 2023/CCZ/001, which the Court relied on, “under no circumstances can civil proceedings be used to arrest criminal investigations, and therefore, this court has no jurisdiction to grant an order whose effect is to stop or abort criminal proceedings or investigations.”
According to the Court documents, the money the bank is alleged to have stolen belongs to Dr. Rajan Mahtani, a Zambian business mogul.
Atlas Mara collected money on behalf of Dr. Mahtani from Lamasat International Limited through the Receiver, but only transferred part of the amount to him claiming that that was all they had collected for him, hence the bank being reported to the Police for Theft by Agent.
Atlas Mara has been taken over by Access Bank, 8 years after Bob Diamond who had bought Finance Bank Zambia Limited from Rajan Mahtani merged it with Banc ABC to form Atlas Mara Zambia.