Recently, seems frauds in banking industry as finally turned fashion in financial institutes. Meanwhile, Mainstream bank Plc (now Skye Bank) is one of the fraudulent bank with the highest bank fraud in recent times. However, top oil magnate, Mr. Femi Otedola, has literally dragged the management before the Federal High Court in Lagos over an alleged illegal deduction of N3.4 billion from its company, Forte Oil Plc’s account.
Info reaching our source has it that Forte Oil, in its statement of claim filed before the court by its lawyer, Babajide Koku, SAN, alleged that the bank was one of its underwriters of its shares offered to the public between August 21 and September 29, 2008.
The management also claimed the bank was under an obligation to pay to it, upon the close of the offer, the sum of N11,623,537,500.00, representing the value of 46,464,150 units of its shares.
Forte Oil further alleged that it instructed the bank to transfer the said amount due from the share issue underwriting commitment into its current account with number 0030015642617 with the bank in order to offset its liabilities in the sum of N11,339350,809.50 at a meeting between the representatives of the parties at the bank’s office on December 28, 2009.
The bank, the oil company claimed, carried out its instruction by paying the sum of N11, 623,537,500.00 into its account on December 30, 2009, leaving a balance of N284, 186,690.50 in the account.
Otedola’s Forte Oil further stated that the bank, on December 31,2009, unilaterally reversed the position by removing the sum of N11,623,537,500.00, which it had earlier paid into its account, adding that the bank later communicated to it in a letter dated February 22, 2010 that it had unilaterally opened an account in which it deposited the underwriting commitment fees.
Forte Oil also alleged that it wrote several letters to the bank insisting that it should transfer the said underwriting commitment fees to offset her liabilities on its current account in the sum of N11, 33,350,809.50.
It claimed that the bank, however, continued to debt its account in form of interest at an average of N200,000,000.00 monthly at the rate of 16 percent, and did not show any corresponding attraction of interest to its money.
The oil company also alleged that after the financial consultant carefully reconciled and reconstructed its current account to show its true state, the exercise revealed excess interest and other bank charges (COT and account maintenance) charged totalling N3,441,529,445.17, which should not have been if the bank had followed its instruction.
Consequently, Forte Oil is praying the court to declare that the manner in which the bank operated its account with number 0030015642617 is “wrong, irregular, unethical and contrary to all banking regulations and practices.”
It is also seeking an order of the court directing the bank to credit its account with the sum of N3,441,529,445.17, being the total sum of the unauthorized and wrongful charges, deduction and interest that would have accrued to it had its instruction of July 22,2009, been carried out.
The oil company is also seeking an order of perpetual injunction restraining the bank from any further unauthorized charges, deductions and withholding any sum in its account.