One of Nigeria’s leading real estate and property company, Suru Worldwide Venture Nigeria Limited, has accused Asset Management Company of Nigeria (AMCON) of flouting court order to illegally sell its private property, two years after the illegal invasion and forcefully pulling security services and replacing them with AMCON security officers, despite court orders to “stay the continuing and or further execution of the said judgment”
Speaking with the newsmen on Tuesday, 29 September 2020, the Group Managing Director, Mr Edward Akinlade noted that SURU group, got a notice from AMCON stating that the Ikeja property has been sold, and he has, as a matter of necessity, published a Caveat Emptor on the said property in The Punch newspaper to notify either prospective buyer or the so-called buyer that the property is under legal battle which is currently in favour of Suru Group
Edward considers the action taken by AMCON as contempt of the court despite the pendency of the ruling before the court of Appeal.
“We are particularly dissatisfied with the blatant disregard of the rule of law, displayed by an highly revered agency such as AMCON, being a mechanism in the temple of justice that ought to respect and uphold the tenets of law rather than disrespect the court”, he said.
“It started in 2010 when we were banking with Ecobank. N13billion fund was cancelled after we have drawn N10billion. About this time, we have already bought GRA, Opebi and Best western
“We were servicing our loan, until our performing loan was sold to AMCON. AMCON was not supposed to buy servicing loan.
“So we sued Ecobank for selling our loan, and this case is still at the Federal court
“AMCON counter claimed our case and said we have owed 26 million. It was later discovered that Ecobank had sold loan to AMCON for 8.3 billion, without notifying us.
“We want it to be on record that we never to AMCON to court, This is because we believe we have no business with AMCON but the bank who sold our active loan to the agency.
“As we speak, all the cases we had and won, was filed by AMCON and the 3 different suits were all won by Suru Group.
AMCON has currently exalted the matter before the Supreme Court.
So, when AMCON wrote the letter on September, 2, 2020 stating that our IKEJA GRA property has been sold, we wonder under what power? AMCON has no power to sell a property that has been sealed by the court.
Currently, one of our properties that have been sealed, has depreciated from N6billion to N1Billion naira. All the roofs are gone, the swimming pool is off, the kitchen, the restaurant, bars and all the rooms are totally dilapidated. It will cost no less than 8Billion to return the property to its usually working state, and the international standard that it is known for.
Under a standard working system, government agency obey the rule of the court, except f it is against national interest. But nobody obeys court order in Nigeria.
So we wrote AMCON and told them they owe us 2billion. The valuation of that hotel is 5billion
We also have case with a customer who was teargassed.
The total cost, at minimum to refurbish that place is 8billion, what AMCON said we owe then is 6billion, so we asked them to remove the 6billion from the 8billion worth of damage and pay us the remaining 2billion. This means AMCON is owing us.”, he added.
AMCON had launched an onslaught to recover the N5.4 trillion bad debts it bought from commercial banks, and has gone on seizing spree in the last 3 years, taking over valuable assets belonging to prominent Nigerians and companies with no regard for rule of law.
Mr Edward Akinlade commended the judiciary arm of the government for its unbiased judicial conduct and implore the general public to remain law abiding.
Send Us News, Gist, more... to citypeopleng@gmail.com | Twitter: @CitypeopleMagz
