Yassin Abdullah Kadi (Kadi II - General Court)

The General Court annuls the regulation freezing Yassin Abdullah Kadi’s funds.

The regulation was adopted in breach of Mr Kadi’s rights of defence and constitutes an unjustified restriction of his right to property. 

The reasoning of the General Court is particularly interesting on the degree of its review. 

The General Court considers that, in light of the judgment of the Court of Justice in Kadi, its task is to ensure in this case a full and rigorous review of the lawfulness of the regulation, without affording the latter any immunity from jurisdiction on the ground that it gives effect to resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council. That must remain the case, at the very least, so long as the re-examination procedure operated by the Sanctions Committee clearly fails to offer guarantees of effective judicial protection, as the Court of Justice considered to be the case in its judgment in Kadi. The review must concern, indirectly, the substantive assessments of the Sanctions Committee itself and the evidence underlying them. Such a review is all the more justified given that the measures in question have had a marked and long-lasting effect on the fundamental rights of Mr Kadi, all of whose funds have been indefinitely frozen for nearly ten years now.