Exchange Control in UK Law

It might create an obligation to apply the loan portfolio to repayment of the loan and for no other purpose. Or it might create an obligation to repay the loan only out of the loan portfolio and not from any other fund unless authorised. Which of these it is to bear must depend upon the nature of the document in which the condition appears. In a commercial contract, between lender and borrower, the first meaning would be appropriate, possibly the more appropriate of the two.

These cases show that the conduct and relative moral culpability of the parties may be relevant in determining whether or not the ex turpi causa defence falls to be applied as a matter of public policy. In the latter case on the other hand, the ex turpi causa defence succeeded although the plaintiff's cause of action lay in tort.

On the one hand it is unacceptable that any court of law should aid or lend its authority to a party seeking to pursue or enforce an object or agreement which the law prohibits. On the other hand, it is unacceptable that the court should, on the first indication of unlawfulness affecting any aspect of a transaction, draw up its skirts and refuse all assistance to the plaintiff, no matter how serious his loss nor how disproportionate his loss to the unlawfulness of his conduct.

We agree with the view of the learned judge, which by inference must have been that of the arbitrators, that the legislation was not so repugnant to British ideas of international and personal morality as to require the English courts to ignore its existence.

There are a number of facts which point to the Ghanaian cedi as the currency in which the Department felt its loss. First of all, the currency in which the Department carried on business within Ghana was at the material time the cedi. Consistently with this, the Department's bank accounts were maintained in cedis, as were its books and accounts. This sale was, as is usually the case in such circumstances, being carried out in the domestic currency in question, here the cedi.

Just as public policy avoids contracts which offend against our own law, so it will avoid at least some contracts which violate the laws of a foreign State, and it will do so because public policy demands that deference to international comity.

The common law of England has for centuries recognised that a man has a right to work at his trade or profession without being unjustly excluded from it. He is not to be shut out from it at the whim of those having the governance of it. If they make a rule which enables them to reject his application arbitrarily or capriciously, not reasonably, that rule is bad.