As the criminal case against Petro Union Directors continues at the Federal High Court in Lagos, the Supreme Court will tomorrow continue its hearing in the case involving the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Union Bank of Nigeria (UBN) and an oil and gas company – Petro Union Oil and Gas Limited (Petro Union) over an alleged £2.550billion fraud.
The series of incidents upon which the case is based began in 1994 when Petro Union allegedly fraudulently procured a cheque from a branch of Barclays Bank in the UK with a value of £2.556 billion and presented it at one of Union Bank’s branches in Lagos, with a claim that it had a contract purportedly for the purpose of constructing two refineries, a fertiliser plant and a cement paper bag plant.
Subsequent due diligence investigations by Union Bank at the time revealed that the Cheque/Bill or Instrument dated December 29, 1994 for the sum of £2,556 billion drawn in favour of Gladstone Kukoyi & Associates, was confirmed by Barclays’ Bank to be fake. In addition, Gazeaft Limited, the drawers of the bill of exchange for the sum of £2,556billion was confirmed by Barclays Bank not to have an account with Barclays. Even more alarming, Gazeaft Limited was confirmed by Barclays not to be on the list of Registered Companies in the UK by the Companies Registry in the UK.
Despite these findings, Petro Union and its agents maintained their claims that UBN received the sum of £2,556,000,000.00 on its behalf and transferred the sum of £2,159,221,318.54 to the CBN while retaining the sum of £396,778,681.46. Petro Union’s demands were then followed by court actions against the CBN and Union Bank based on these questionable claims.