Customer petitions court over alleged fraud

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A customer of the Nigerian Breweries Plc, Aba District, Abia State, Mr. Sunday Akpan, has dragged the company to a High Court in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, over an alleged fraud.

Akpan, who is a Chief Executive Officer of Sunubros Enterprises Limited, was said to have discovered that the quantity of products which NB Plc supplied to his firm did not tally with the N26m payment Sunubros made to the brewery.

The presiding judge, Hon. Justice Ifiok Ukana, adjourned the proceeding for 20 minutes to allow the defence counsels to add up the total amount paid to the brewery with a view to comparing it with the amount in the breweries statement of accounts submitted as an exhibit to the court.

It was learnt that at the resumption of the court the accounts did not tally.

The judge had to adjourn the case till December 9 and 10 2015 for cross examination and advised the leaders of the 6-man defence counsel, Joe Agi (SAN) and Chief Musa Jiani to be more prepared to prove without reasonable doubt that the mistakes were typographic errors by the brewery at its next sitting.

The counsel to the complainant, Mr. Ekpa Ekpa, on Monday, told journalists that the case number HU/IC/2011 filed on January 11, 2011, is made up of 20 counts, which was initially handled by the Akwa Ibom State Ministry of Justice, but was later taken over by Festus Keyamo on application to the state attorney general.

Ekpa stated that it was only one aspect of the total charges that had been heard by the court.

He added that the cases for the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and the 6th accused had been struck out by Justice Joy Unwana since the persons were no more in the employ of NB Plc (the 1st respondent).

Ekpa noted that several accused persons were currently standing trial before Ukana in the case.

“Before the case was reassigned to the court, Justice Andrew Okon (retd.) had overruled the defence counsel on the preliminary objection raised on the competence of the charge on March 25, 2013.

“The defence counsel on the development lost his appeal in the Appeal Court, Calabar, Cross River State, and the case remitted to the Uyo High Court for accelerated hearing,” he said.

He said that some of the accused, who were in the employ of the NB as the 3rd defendants, ran to Hungary to evade the trial, but had been repatriated to Nigeria by the Hungary Government on notice and were in court during the last sitting.

Source: Punch