By Brave Dickson
A Port Harcourt based company, Olympic Petroleum Limited has won fraud suit against defunct Diamond Bank Nig PLC now Access Bank in suit number: PMC/293/2017.
In its particulars of claim made available to TPCN, Olympic Petroleum Limited (Claimant) had sought three orders before the court as followed: “(1) An injunction restraining the defunct Diamond Bank (defendant), servants or any other person acting on the bank’s instruction from making further unauthorized deductions from the claimant’s account.
“(2) An order directing the defendant to refund the sum of N791,681.36 (Seven Hundred and Ninety-One Thousand, Six Hundred and Eighty-One Naira, Thirty-Six Kobo), being the total amount of money illegally withdrawn from the claimant’s account by the defendant as stated in the audit report of Nzeogu & Co.
“(3) An order directing the defendant to pay the claimant the sum of N3, 000.000,00 (Three Million Naira) as general damages.”
In his excitement, the Managing Director of Olympic Petroleum Limited, Mr Ezekiel Ijiga applauded the judgement, adding that in all fairness that his company deserved justice in the suit.
He told our correspondent that: “This is a case of fraud by former Diamond Bank now called Access Bank. The bank went into the company account of Olympic Petroleum Limited and took over N700,000 according to the audit report. I wrote a letter to the bank for a refund and the bank was adamant over the issue. I wrote another reminder after about a month and the bank still did not comply.
“I reported the fraud issue to my lawyer Barr Geoffrey Joseph who wrote the bank and the bank replied within one week. The bank told my lawyer to give it some time to investigate the fraud matter. After about five months of waiting, there was no reply. My lawyer wrote another reminder and thereafter the bank replied by admitting that the money it erroneously took from my company’s account was about N200,000 not up to N700,000 as contained in the audit report.
“The bank refused to refund the money in question and that was why we took it to court. The chief magistrate today started by saying that she never wanted to read out the content of the judgement because it involved a bank and that she wouldn’t want customers to lose confidence in the bank but rather said that Olympic Petroleum Limited won the case against the bank.”
On his part, Lawyer to the company, Barr Geoffrey Joseph said the action of the bank against his client was in flagrant violation of extant monetary laws in the country, maintaining that the judgement which has been entered in favour of his client would serve as a deterrent to other banks.
The lawyer said: “We had a case against Diamond Bank now Access Bank for unlawful charges and inappropriate deductions from the account of our client, Olympic Petroleum Limited and we felt that the bank can not unilaterally make such deductions without any authorization from my client. So, we felt that the only way we can ventilate our grievance is to come to court to seek justice and today we have gotten justice.”
