First Bank in Forgery Scandal
Under the purported mortgage agreement, the bank could, at a
short notice, acquire and take over the school’s property – comprising six
buildings with four floors each estimated to worth N6 billion – at Plot 528
Cadastral Zone B4, Jabi, Abuja. The bank allegedly also used the said forged
agreement to obtain an order of a Federal High Court in suit no:
FHC/ABJ/CS/1023/2015 granting it access to the school’s property.
But when summoned by the Hon. Uzoma Nkem Abonta-led House
Committee on Public Petitions to explain his role and authenticate the
notarized documents and affidavits tendered by the bank before the Corporate
Affairs Commission and supposedly signed by him, Imakhai said that the
signature, stamp and letterhead were not his. Imakhai insisted that he had
never met with any of the parties and that he did not notarize any document on
their instructions. Upon his denial, the committee asked him to append his
signature and stamp on a paper which he did and, surprisingly, they were
totally different from the one presented by the First Bank.
To further deepen First Bank’s blushes, affidavits deposed
to at the High Court of the FCT by the Ibes and the owners of Whiteplains
indicated that they had never met Imakhai and did not instruct him to notarize
such documents. Aside from the alleged forgery, the committee wondered why
First Bank officials hid the mortgage agreement from the other two parties
until they were presented in court. The House Committee has threatened to order
the arrest of Dibiaezue Chuks, an external solicitor to the bank, to explain
his role in the entire debacle. Dibiaezue did not honour the invitation of the
committee thus forcing the chairman to threaten him with arrest and disbarment.
Hon Abonta declared that the committee is poised to get to
the root of the allegation because “This does not tell well of our country’s
image abroad. A notarized document is trusted globally to be correct because it
is signed by a notary public. We are not interested in the loan issue between
First Bank and Whiteplains, because, as a bank, you have every right to go
after and protect your money. At stake, for us, is the allegation of forgery
and superimposition of signatures by the bank officials which they used in perfecting
the tripartite mortgage agreement at the CAC (Corporate Affairs Commission).”
He concluded, “We don’t have any problem with the court judgment in respect of
the loan, but it is elementary in law that something cannot stand on nothing.”
Source: thecapital.ng
Source: thecapital.ng
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