Abuilding and civil engineering firm, Omais Investment Nigeria Limited has challenged acommercial bank, Ecobank Nigeria Limited, at the Federal High Court, in Lagos for allegedly making unfair report about its accounts to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)and listing it as having bad credit.
Also sued together with the bank was the CBN as second defendant.
In a writ of summon, FHC/C/CS/382/15, by its lawyer, Ehizogie Esezobor, the plaintiff made a four-point claim jointly and severally against the defendants.
It asked the court for an order directing the first defendant to pay N2billion as damages for negligent mis-statements.
The other reliefs being sought are: “an order of restorative injunction directing the first and second defendants to remove the plaintiff’s name from the CBN’s Credit Risk Management System (CRMS) database as a customer having a ‘non-performing loan’ and a declaration that the first defendant’s listing of the plaintiff’s accounts with the CBN’s CRMS database as a non-performing loan amounts to negligent mis-statements”.
The plaintiff is also asking for the cost of the action as may be assessed by the court.
The plaintiff, in a 21-point statement of claim to support the writ of summon, averred that it used to operate two accounts with the defunct Oceanic Bank International Bank Plc and that following a 100 per cent acquisition of Oceanic Bank by the first defendant in 2011, it became its customer, adding that being its bankers, the first defendant owed it a fiduciary duty ofcare.
The plaintiff averred that it operated a corporate account and a Pearl account with the first defendant and that as at October 15, 2009, it had N637,958.69 standing credit in its Pearl account and N301,777.46 in its corporate account as at October 30, 2009; the time it stopped transacting and doing business on these accounts with the first defendants. It stated that between October, 2009 and October, 2014, it has had the cause to obtain and has obtained several facilities from various commercial banks to the tune of N5billion and had always repaid them as at when due, adding that its annual turn over was not less than N1billion.
The plaintiff averred that it came to the company as a shock when in an attempt to obtain a loan from Diamond Bank Plc in January this year that it was revealed that the first defendant had listed the plaintiff as having bad credit at the CRMS of the second defendant to the tune of N6 million and was not informed about it since 2009 when it stopped transactions with the first defendant, by a letter of demand, notification by way of a statement of account or by any other medium whatsoever that it was indebted to the first defendant in any sum.
The firm claimed to have written two letters to the first defendant dated January 20 and February 24, 2015 respectively, demanding for a removal/retraction of the report, but that the first defendant, in spite of acknowledging the letters, did not respond until March 5, 2015.
It claimed that the first defendant, in its reply “unequivocally and expressly admitted having made erroneous deductions in plaintiff’s accounts and despite these admissions refused to remove the plaintiffs name from the second defendant’s CRMS database as having a bad credit”.
The plaintiff claimed to be involved in a suit number ID/1432/2011 against the defunct Oceanic Bank at the Lagos High Court since 2011 and had appeared at the Lagos State multi-door courthouse for about six occasions with the aim of resolving all issues of indebtedness between parties, but that the first defendant did not in any manner raised the supposedly debt. The plaintiff averred that the acts of the first defendant by reporting that it had bad credit to CRMS have been done intentionally, unjustly and in bad faith as it claimed that the defendant did not in any manner whatsoever disclosed this debt despite having ample opportunity to do so.
In its particulars of claim, the plaintiff stated that the first defendant breached the fiduciary duty of care owed it by virtue of CBN’s Prudential Guidelines for Licensed Banks and that representations made by listing its accounts as non-performing loan in the CRMS database were false, untrue, inaccurate and misleading.
It claimed that it has become practically impossible for the plaintiff to obtain facilities from any other financial institutions in the country to carry on its businesses and consequent upon which it has grounded to a halt. The plaintiff claimed to have suffered colossal losses and damages, seriously injured in its businesses as a result of its being listed in the database, insisting that the representation was done maliciously, without just cause or excuse and was allegedly calculated by the first defendant to cause pecuniary damage to its businesses.
The plaintiff urged the court to grant all the reliefs sought in its statement of claim.
