The High Court has ruled that the order to cancel the passport of former tourism Minister Ibrahim Hussain Zaki 5 years after the order was initially issued.
In 2020, the Civil Court issued an order to cancel Zaki's passport in an enforcement case.
However, the Immigration appealed the order to the High Court, which ruled in September 2022 that the state had no standing to appeal.
The State then turned to the Supreme Court for its right to appeal in November of the same year.
A year later, the Supreme Court ruled that the state had the right to appeal against the order to cancel Zaki's passport. The Supreme Court ordered the High Court to hear the case.
This prompted the State to appeal the Civil Court's decision at the High Court once again. The State argued that if the payee in proved debt cases is a legal entity such as a company, its directors can withhold their passports to prevent them from traveling abroad, although the Code of Practice for Unsecured Proved Debt Transactions does not give the court the power to cancel passports.
On Tuesday, more than a year after the case was filed, the High Court ruled that the rules ordered the seizure of passports and therefore, it was legally correct to interpret the provision so that passports could be cancelled.
The High Court also ruled that adding something to a law or regulation that is not explicitly stated in the law or regulation is to include something that is not covered by the law or regulation.
