Shareholders of the defunct
Intercontinental Bank Plc have asked an Abuja Federal High Court to
order the suspended Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr. Lamido
Sanusi, to pay them N10bn as damages over what they described as the
fraudulent banking and investment practices and breaches involved in the
sale of the bank.
The plaintiffs, Abdullahi Sani, Adaeze
Onwuegbusi and Chijioke Ezeikpe, in the suit filed by their lawyer,
Chris Uche SAN, accused Sanusi of conniving with the Managing Director
and Deputy Managing Director, Access Bank Plc, Mr. Aigboje
Aig-Imokhuede, and Mr. Herbert Wigwe, and Senator Bukola Saraki, to sell
the bank in a bid to confer corrupt advantage upon themselves.
The CBN and the Securities and Exchange
Commission were joined as defendants in the suit, which came up before
Justice Ahmed Mohammed on Tuesday.
Justice Mohammed granted an ex-parte
motion in which the plaintiffs sought leave to serve the suit on Sanusi
by pasting copies of the originating summons at the headquarters of the
CBN.
The plaintiffs also urged the court to
order the CBN to immediately recover the sums of N16.2bn and N8.9bn,
together with accrued interests, being owed Intercontinental Bank by
Aig-Imokhuede, Wigwe and Saraki.
The court was asked to declare that the
takeover of Intercontinental Bank by Access Bank on the instructions of
the Sanusi “without any lawful justification whatsoever in a bid to
confer corrupt advantage upon himself and his
friends/associates/cronies” was illegal, null and void.
In the same vein, the plaintiffs asked
the court to order SEC to conduct a detailed public investigation into
the circumstances surrounding the acquisition on Intercontinental Bank
by Access Bank.
In an affidavit in support of the
originating summons, the plaintiffs averred that as of August 2009,
Intercontinental Bank had a paid up capital of N230bn and a balance
sheet of N1.6bn, 330 branches nationwide, 10 subsidiaries and 12,000
workers.
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