Court orders 9Mobile to settle N55bn debt to Keystone Bank
Federal High Court sitting in Lagos has ordered the parent firm of telecommunications firm, 9Mobile, the Teleology Nigeria Limited to pay the sum of N55,776,507,599.00 it owes Keystone Bank Limited.
In an action filed on behalf of Keystone Bank Limited by its counsel, Bode Olanipekun, SAN, Teleology Nigeria Limited was alleged to have failed to service the loan facility which was deployed towards financing its acquisition of strategic assets in Emerging Markets Telecommunication Services Ltd., doing business as 9Mobile Network.
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.
“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 Keystone Bank, Olanipekun said in court.
In his ruling, Justice Yellin Bogoro ordered the telecoms firm to pay the debt owed to Keystone Bank Limited.
Justice Bogoro, 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, and ordered Teleology to pay the sum representing the outstanding debt from the loan facilities granted to it.
Earlier, Counsel to Teleology Nigeria Limited, Michael Kaase Aondoakaa, SAN urged the court not to deliver judgment in favour of Keystone Bank, contesting that the Federal High Court lacked the jurisdiction to entertain matters relating to banker-customer relationship.
However, Olanipekun prayed the court to discountenanced Aondoakaa’s submissions, as there was no application for the arrest of the court’s judgment or an appeal against the order of court.
