An agro allied company, Anadariya, alongside a limited liability company, Dantata Holdings and a Director of the two companies, Usman Dantata, have filed a counter claim of N6,900,670,890.20 against the claim of N2.2 billion filed against them by Unity Bank Plc.
Unity bank Plc alongside its debt recovery agent, Frontier Capital Alternative Assets Limited, had in a statement of claim filed before a Federal High Court in Lagos demanded for the sum of N2.2billion being unpaid debt.
However, Anadariya, Dantata Holdings and Usman Dantata is demanding for the sum of N6,900,670,890.20 as special damages as a result of economic ruins they suffered because of the breach of contract and mismanagement of Anadariya’s company account by Unity Bank.
Unity Bank Plc and Frontier Capital Alternative Assets Limited in a statement of claim filed against Anadariya Industries Limited, Dantata Holdings Limited, Usman Dantata and Rajiv Kachola, alleged that in October 2011, on the account of Anadariya Industries Limited formal application through Usman Dantata who is the Managing Director and alter ego of the company, under the auspices of the Central Bank of Nigeria Commercial Agricultural Credit Scheme, Unity Bank Plc granted the company a loan facility of N2billion. The company also later applied for additional facility of N200million which was also granted.
The loan was to enable the company to finance the stocking of the farm with Chick, pullet, layers, and purchase of machineries and equipment, and to augment working capital requirements, for the purchase of stock of feed inputs, fertilizers and soil implements, staff cost, miscellaneous and overheads.
The loan was secured with the Personal Guarantees of all the Directors of Anadariya, Usman Dantata and Rajiv Kacholia supported by statement of their personal financial net worth.
There was also Corporate surety of Dantata Holdings Ltd guaranteeing the due prompt repayment of the facility as principal debtor.
The plaintiffs alleged further that a cardinal element of the agreed source of repayment of the loan was that the loan will be repaid primarily from the sales proceeds of Anadariya’s farm products in furtherance of which the defendants undertook to domicile all cash proceeds from its daily operations with the bank.
The plaintiffs stated that the defendants negligently and consistently failed and refused to repay the loan as at when due.
They further averred that despite the series of demands by Frontier Capital Alternative Assets Limited, through phone conversation and email correspondences aimed at recovery of the debt, the defendants have refused to repay their indebtedness to the bank.
Wherefore the plaintiffs claimed against the defendants jointly and severally as follows:
- An order of the court directing the defendants to repay the liquidated and incontestable principal loan amount of N2.2Billion.
- An order of the court directing the plaintiffs and the defendants to proceed to Arbitration for the determination of the outstanding interest on the said principal loan of N2.2billion which interest was in the sum of N3,785,273,683.19.
- The sum of N25million as the cost of this legal action.
However, in a statement of defence and counter claim filed before the court by Anadariya Industries, Dantata Holdings Limited and Usman Dantata against the claim of Unity Bank Plc and Frontier Capital Alternative Assets Limited, they denied almost all the averments of Unity Bank Plc.
They said that contrary to the schedule of drawdown submitted to and approved by the Central Bank of Nigeria, and to the consternation of the company, Unity Bank Plc failed to disburse the facility in line with the schedule.
The delay became a trend and negatively affected the project of the company, owing to the delays, the company has not only been able to realise the project income but have to rely on overdraft from the bank at commercial interest rate, and meagre income realised from the business had to be deployed to the payment of commercial interest rates on the facility offered by the bank.
The company alleged further that the unwarranted delays by the bank in disbursement of the facility for several days contrary to the approved disbursement schedule, was to the benefit of the bank which had applied the approved Commercial Agricultural Credit Scheme fund to commercial use and thereby profiting therefrom to the detriment of the company and reckless breach of the offer letter while the company suffered economic ruin by rendering the facility unpayable in accordance with the payment schedule.
Apart from the reckless breach of the loan contract enumerated above, the bank was alleged to have imputed excess, illegal and unlawful charges into the account of the company, thereby resulting in the bloated alleged sum of indebtedness.
They cited a report of forensic expert which revealed that Unity Bank imputed excess, spurious, unknown, illegal and unlawful charges to the tune of N2,920,210,681.12.
The entries were allegedly disguised under various unknown and outright unlawful names.
Consequently, Anadariya Limited is urging the court to:
- Order Unity Bank for immediate payment of N5,400,670,890.20 to it, representing the identified, illegal, unknown, excess, spurious and unjustifiable charges imputed into its account.
- The sum of N1.5Billion being special damages for the loss of expected earnings.
- A declaration that the alleged debt balances in the company accounts are inaccurate, erroneous, bogus, untenable a hoax and not fair reflection of the state affairs of the accounts maintained with the bank.
The case has been adjourned till March 7, 2022for hearing.
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