A Federal High Court sitting in Lagos has been approached by a limited liability company, PRO INTERNATIONAL CONCEPT, with an application seeking to commit Mr. Chika Nwosu, the Managing Director of Palmpay Limited, to prison for alleged contempt of court over a N95 million fraud case.
The company, through its lawyer, Prince Bayo Omotubora of the law firm Bayo Omotubora & Co., filed the application accusing Mr. Nwosu of willful disobedience to express orders of the court made on November 21, 2024.
According to an affidavit in support of the committal proceedings sworn to by a litigation manager, Omotayo Adebayo, the company had opened an operational account with a commercial bank using the email address charlie.falahah@gmail.com. However, due to a clerical error by the bank, the email was wrongly documented as charlie.falahan@gmail.com, with the final letter “h” mistakenly typed as “n”.
Despite repeated requests to correct the email, the bank failed to act. Consequently, the company chose to operate with the incorrect email address. The affidavit states that this email address was later used by fraudsters to gain unauthorized access to the company’s account.
On September 5, 2024, the company’s account was allegedly hacked, and a total sum of N95 million was fraudulently withdrawn. The funds were initially broken into four parts and transferred into four accounts domiciled in Wema Bank, before being further disbursed in tranches into accounts held in nine other banks, including Palmpay.
Upon discovering the fraudulent transfers, the company immediately notified its account officer, who promptly issued “Block and Recall of Fraudulent Transactions IFO PRO International Concept” messages to the fraud desks of 28 financial institutions, including Palmpay.
In response, the fraud desks reportedly agreed to freeze the suspected accounts for a period of 72 hours, pending the receipt of a valid court order to extend the freeze. The company subsequently obtained a court order from a District Court in Ngararaba Gurku, Nasarawa State, on September 9, 2024, and served it on the financial institutions involved.
Further to this, the company instituted legal proceedings before the Federal High Court, which on November 21, 2024, ordered that the salvaged funds in the affected accounts be reversed to PRO INTERNATIONAL CONCEPT and placed a lien on the implicated accounts for further investigation.
Despite being duly served with the court’s order and all related legal processes, Palmpay, under the leadership of Mr. Chika Nwosu, allegedly failed to comply with the directive to reverse the funds.
Following what it described as persistent non-compliance, the company initiated committal proceedings by filing and serving a Form 48 (Notice of Consequences of Disobedience to Court Order) on Palmpay. Yet, the company alleges, Mr. Nwosu and Palmpay refused to act on the order.
The applicant is now urging the court to direct Mr. Nwosu to appear before it to show cause why he should not be committed to prison for alleged willful disobedience, and to ultimately commit him to prison for contempt.
The matter is set to be determined by the court in due course.
(C) Nairaland
