The Federal High Court in Lagos has ordered Stanbic IBTC Bank to reverse the illegal sale of Mrs Abosede Folasayo Fagbola’s property situated at 3 Ayoola Adeyefa Street (Plot 4 Block N) Oroki Estate, Osogbo, Osun state.
The Osun-based lawyer dragged the bank before a Federal high court in Lagos after her property was sold without her knowledge.
Joined as co -defendant is one Olusegun Akanji who is believed to have purchased of the plaintiff’s property.
In a statement of claim accompanied by written statement of witness, sworn to by Mrs Fagbola and filed before the court by a Lagos lawyer Barrister Olatunde Adejuyigbe, SAN, the plaintiff stated that she is a customer of Stanbic IBTC bank Plc, and in July 2013, the bank granted her a residential property loan to the sum of N9 million to purchase the property located at 3 Ayoola Adeyefa Street Oroki Housing State, Osogbo.
She executed in favour of the bank a deed of legal mortgage dated 13th of August 2014 while she made lodgements of funds into her account with the bank, from time to time as repayment of the loan and accrued interest.
However she discovered that her account was not being kept properly by the bank as her account was full of discrepancies arising from improper entries, wrongful debts, unauthorized and arbitrary charges.
The plaintiff also discovered that the bank was charging arbitrary and illegal interest rates on the loan facility contrary to the appropriate lending rates approved by the Central Bank of Nigeria and against the terms and conditions of the loan facility.
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The plaintiff alleged further that the illegal charges applied to her account has made it difficult and impossible to determine the proper status of her account with the bank, as she has at various time expressed her misgivings to the bank about the illegal charges.
In a letter dated 14 June, the bank informed her that her property situated at 3, Ayoola Adeyefa Osogbo had been sold by private treaty to the sum of N7 millon.
It was also stated in the same letter that her indebtedness to the bank is in the sum of N8,818,583,583.
She later received a letter from the law firm of OLUJIMI & AKEREDOLU captioned “NOTICE OF CHANGE OF OWNERSHIP, where it was stated that the property has been acquired by one Mr Olusegun Akanji.
The plaintiff avers that the sale of her property by Stanbic IBTC to Olusegun Akanji is illegal and unlawful, in that the bank was not entitled to sell the property as its power of sale as mortgagee had not become exercisable at the time the property was sold.
She stated that the bank acted in bad faith when it sold the her property to Olusegun Akanji at a gross undervalue in the sum of N7 million as the bank is well aware that the current market value of the property is far above the paltry sum of N7 million.
The plaintiff avers that the sale of her property by the bank to the second defendant was done in fraudulent manner based on collusion between the two defendants.
The plaintiff alleged in a particulars of fraud and stated that the sale of the property was conducted by the bank in a non-transparent manner.
The plaintiff contended that the sale of the property is vitiated by fraud and should be set aside by the court as she was not indebted to the bank in the sum of N15,818,583 as the said sum emanated from the wrongful debts and illegal interest rates posted to her account by the bank.
Consequently the plaintiff claims against the defendants jointly and severally are as follows: An order setting aside the sale of the plaintiff’s property.
An order directing Stanbic IBTC Bank to reverse all the wrongful charges and illegal interest rates debited to the plaintiff’s account in respect of the plaintiff’s property loan contrary to the terms of the said loan.
An order of perpetual injunction restraining Olusegun Akanji from parading himself as the owner of the plaintiff’s property.
