Lawyer cries out to IGP, CBN over N750m frozen funds

For a company that maintains it did nothing wrong, winning in court was supposed to be the end of their ordeal. Instead, the Nigerian company is still waiting for access to N750.37 million of its own money, weeks after a Federal High Court ordered that every restriction on its accounts be lifted.

That frustration has now pushed the company’s lawyer and company secretary, Prince Oko Kalu, to take the fight directly to the Inspector General of Police IGP, Tunji Disu, and the Central Bank of Nigeria CBN, demanding their urgent intervention to secure the return of funds he says have already been moved out of reach.

In a Save our Soul message delivered to the IGP and the CBN on Thursday in Abuja, Kalu laid out, with court documents in hand, they are still in shock how Kudiwave Technologies Limited with no link to any fraud found its account frozen, contested that freeze through the courts, won, and still has not seen its money returned.

The story began, according to Kalu, when an A-list bank obtained a Federal High Court order imposing post-no-debit restrictions on accounts linked to 22 defendants in a fraud investigation. The company was not one of those 22 defendants. But its account with a Microfinance Bank was caught in the restriction simply because the bank itself had been listed as a respondent in the case.

He said the company fought to clear its name, applying to be joined as a party to the suit and to have the restriction on its account set aside, insisting it had no connection whatsoever to the alleged fraudulent transactions at the centre of the case. But rather than the matter ending there, Kalu said the police moved to sweep the company’s entire balance of N750.37 million into an account belonging to the Police Special Fraud Unit SFU, rather than isolating whatever specific amount may have been linked to the investigation.

The police later withdrew that application on June 29, only for the company to discover that an order had still been obtained directing the transfer of the company’s full balance. The company pushed back on July 3, telling the court it had never been served the relevant processes and had never been given a hearing before the funds were touched.

By the time the court finally ruled in the company’s favour on July 22 and ordered every restriction on its accounts lifted, the damage had already been done. Kalu said the N750.37 million had been transferred out to an Access Bank account eight days earlier, on July 15, leaving the company with a court victory but no money to show for it.

Since then, Kalu said the company has petitioned the IGP and written to the CBN seeking help, but has yet to receive a satisfactory response. Now he is asking Disu to direct the Commissioner of Police in charge of the SFU in Lagos, Leho Edwin, to investigate the circumstances surrounding both the restriction and the subsequent movement of the funds.

“We urge the CBN and the IGP to wade into the matter and help resolve the situation,” Kalu said, appealing for the immediate return of money that, in the eyes of the court, was never in dispute.