Multichoice Nigeria, a major provider of satellite television services in Africa, lost over N7.9 Billion in a foreign exchange deal that was very controversial.
Akintude Giwa was also involved in a botch foreign transaction along with many others. , a currency exchange broker; JNFX Limited, a currency exchange firm; Ashay Mervyn, a representative of JNFX, and Frontier Financial Technologies Limited.
JNFX is a private limited company situated in England and engaged in foreign exchange and international money transfer business
Mr Giwa is a currency exchange broker who earns a commission by assisting those looking to buy US dollars with Nigerian Naira.
In the court, the judgement was delivered remotely to the parties’ representative by means of E-mail and was also released to the national archives on April 2. The case was judged by Stuarts Isaacs, the deputy judge of the business and property courts of England and Wales.
In this case, the claimant, Mr Giwa, was represented by Matthew Bradley and Rumen Cholakov, who were instructed by Peters Solicitors LLP. They all appeared on behalf of the defendant, JNFX Limited.
Having no representative at all, and listed as second and fourth defendants were Mr Mervyn and Frontier Financial Technologies Limited.
The claim against the third defendant, JNFX Nigeria Limited, was discontinued, and the company was excluded from the judgment.
The company that was excluded and discounted from the judgment was JNFX Nigeria Limited. It was a claim against the third defendant.
Botched Contract
The review of the court showed that Multichoice Nigeria had transactions with Mr Giwa and his companies many years ago, concerning the exchange of Naria to dollar. Mr Giwa acted on Multichoice Nigeria’s behalf, according to him, in arranging plans with JNFX under ten multichoice contracts and in exchanging Naria for dollars.
The proceedings were conducted in a UK court, and Multichoice Nigeria assigned its claims to Mr Giwa. Mr. Giwa’s primary dealings were with JNFX, which was conducted by Mr Mervyn, a representative of JNFX.
The details of the transaction showed that Multichoice Nigeria paid the Naira into the bank accounts of companies regulated by Mr Giwa and was then sent to bank accounts nominated by JNFX through Mr Mervyn in return for dollars to be paid into an account held at another company within the multichoice group of companies Standard Chartered Bank in London in the name of MultiChoice Africa.
Court documents revealed that Multichoice Nigeria Limited paid N7.9 billion (N7,914,209.196.50) to Mr Giwa, the currency exchange broker, who made payments to JNFX Limited, a currency exchange firm, under the MultiChoice contracts. Moreover, according to Mr Giwa, no dollar payments (amounting to $16.2 million) were received by the company in return.
Backend Details
Mr Giwa claimed that JNFX and Mr Mervyn failed to pay the completely equal dollar amount into the Multichoice account. The total sum of the money to be disbursed was N7.9 billion. The JNFX was supposed to pay this sum into the Multichoice contract account for which no dollar payment of $16,230,369 was received. From early 2021, the court documents has shown the instructions given by Mr.Giwa to Mr Mervyn to send the multichoice money to a bank account held by first city Monterey bank in Nigeria, all in the name of Frontier limited.
But no dollar sum was paid in return for the naira amount given. The tenth and last contract was concluded on 8 September 2021, with a provision for conversion of $4.9 billion into $10 million.
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