Court Orders Top Telecoms Owners To Pay N55bn Debt Owed Keystone Bank

AISHA ABUBAKAR

The Federal High Court, sitting in Lagos has ordered Teleology Nigeria Limited, owners of one of the leading mobile Networks, to pay the sum of N55,776,570,509.60 (Fifty-five Billion Naira, Seven Hundred and Seventy-six Million, Five Hundred and Seven Thousand, Five Hundred and Nine Naira, Sixty Kobo) being owed to Keystone Bank Limited.

In an action filed on behalf of Keystone Bank Limited by its counsel, Bode Olanipekun, SAN, Teleology Nigeria Limited was alleged of failure to service the loan facility which was deployed towards financing its acquisition of strategic assets in Emerging Markets Telecommunication Services Ltd.

Olanipekun pointed out that despite the bank’s offer of restructuring of the loan facility, Teleology failed to meet up with various conditions precedent, operation conditions, transaction dynamics, as well as other conditions stated in the restructuring letter.

According to Olanipekun, “rather than receive payment on the defendant’s debt liabilities, the plaintiff received a presentation from a company called PAC Limited proposing amongst others, a debt sale and/or acquisition by Bankruptcy Remote Special Purpose Vehicle in a proposed transaction structure akin to a conversion of the debt to equity without any immediate down payment or repayment of the outstanding huge indebtedness of the defendant.”

Counsel to Teleology Nigeria Limited, Michael Kaase Aôndoakaa, SAN urged the court not to deliver judgment in favour of Keystone Bank as according to him, the Federal High Court lacked the jurisdiction to entertain matters relating to Banker-Customer relationship.

In his reaction, Bode Olanipekun prayed the court to discountenance Aôndoakaa’s submissions, as there was no application for the arrest of the court’s judgment or an appeal against the order of court, adjourning the matter for judgment.

In its decision, the court held that the defendant’s application was akin to an arrest of judgment and that the said procedure was incompatible with the proceedings before it.

While holding that the defendant had no defence to the action, Justice Bogoro entered judgment in favour of the Keystone Bank, ordering Teleology to pay the sum of N55,776,570,509.60 being the outstanding debt from the loan facilities granted to the defendant.