High Court Issues Fresh Arrest of Innoson Chairman “Innocent Chukwuma”

High Court Issues Fresh Arrest of Innoson Chairman “Innocent Chukwuma”

A Lagos High Court sitting in the Ikeja area of the state has issued a warrant for the arrest of the Chairman of Innoson Motors Limited

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A Lagos High Court sitting in the Ikeja area of the state has issued a warrant for the arrest of the Chairman of Innoson Motors Limited, Innocent Chukwuma for failing to appear before the court to face his trial.

Justice Mojisola Dada this morning ordered that Mr Chukwuma should be arrested and brought to court on the next adjourned date of March 14.

Chukwuma was arrested in December last year following his refusal to honor an invitation by the Commission having earlier jumped an administrative bail granted him in a case being investigated by the Capital Market and Insurance Fraud Unit of the Commission’s Lagos office.

Last year Innoson, EFCC, and GTBank where involved in a case together, Chief Innocent Chukwuma had claimed that GTB withdrew from his account the sum of N559,374,072.09 in excess charges. It was on the basis of this claim that Innoson acquired judgment to the tune of N4.7bn from the Federal High Court Awka.

At first glance, one could assume the bank debited funds in Innoson’s account but in the real sense, the N559m represent the interest portion of the N2.4bn loan that he took from the Bank.

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In December 31, 2011, Innoson’s account with the bank was in debit of N1,654,481,895.04 (one billion, six hundred and fifty-four million, four hundred and eighty-one thousand, eight hundred and ninety-five Naira, four Kobo only).

This means that rather than having money in his account, he was owing the bank this amount as debt for loan which he had collected.

However, the EFCC tried to broker a settlement between the Innoson and GTB, which would involve the settlement of Innoson’s indebtedness to the Bank, in view of the fact that Innocent had fraudulently acquired Imported Goods bought solely in the bank’s name.

During the criminal investigation, EFCC got an independent party to reconcile the accounts of Innoson with the Bank.

Upon conclusion of the reconciliation, the independent third party’s view was that the indebtedness of Innocent was N1.09billion and that the sum of N559m was defaulted interest accrued on the loan.

However, in the spirit of resolving the issues amicably, the Bank agreed to forgive him of the default accrued interest, so long as Innoson paid, within 30 days, the sum of N1,095,107,822.95 as full and final payment of his indebtedness to the Bank. Innoson agreed and requested for a letter to that effect.

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