Dragged To Court   

Eight former members of staff of the Ibadan branch of Diamond Bank take the bank to court for alleged malicious sack

•Emeka Onwuka, Diamond Bank MD.

Eight former staff of Diamond Bank plc have dragged it to court for what they called wrongful dismissal.

The plaintiffs, former Diamond Bank’s workers at its Lebanon Road, Ibadan branch who dragged the institution to the Oyo State High Court are Messrs Utieyin Obioru, Deputy Manager; Adio Oluwasegun, Senior Banking Officer; Alasi Oloruntobi, Banking Executive; Chukwuma Kalu, Banking Officer; Ladoja Gbolahan and Tokunbo Obayemi, both management trainees and two others. The embattled staff claim their sack was improper as it came long after they had resigned their appointments with the bank.

But why drop what was supposed to be a plum banking job? As Obioru explained to this magazine, it had to do with an alleged cheque-kitting. That is, payment of another bank’s cheque into an account when there is no sufficient fund to accommodate it. The accounts in question are Dupsob Nigeria Limited, Nukep Nigeria Limited and Mofadeb Investment Limited, all operated by Mrs. Modupe Sobodu, a wholesale distributor of petroleum products and cement. The Dupsob account was opened in February 2005, while Mofadeb’s account was opened in April 2007. On 23 October 2008, the bankers were arrested by operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, at the instance of Mr. Humphrey Akachukwu, Chief Inspector and Head of Compliance and Control at Diamond Bank.

They became apprehensive when at the EFCC office in Lagos they were shown a petition written and signed by Akachukwu on behalf of Diamond Bank that they had connived with Sobodu to steal the sum of N70mn belonging to the bank. They pleaded innocent. As the bank claimed, the employees were about to flee the country, so they were denied bail. They were later released on bail, though, after spending about a week in detention.

Surprisingly, their arrest came barely a month after Diamond Bank had rewarded the customer (Sobodu) with a brand new Honda Accord car valued at N4.995mn on her birthday in 2008 in appreciation of her loyalty to the bank over the years.

As a loyal customer who transacts huge volume of business, Sobodu was said to be getting reserved treatment from the bank as she was often allowed to exceed her approved limit of N200mn in terms of cheque discounting facility. By 23 October 2008, the documented facility for Dupsob Nigeria was N500mn in overdraft and N100mn as internal guidance facility while Mofadeb Investment was entitled to a N22.5mn facility.

The affected staff claimed that the practice of exceeding approved limits for the customer without query had been in place for over four years, even before they were posted to that branch. The practice has always paid off, with Diamond Bank making an income of N68.3mn in July 2008 on the customer’s account just as the minimum monthly income was put at N30mn. By October 2008, the total turnover on Sobodu’s corporate accounts alone stood at N51bn. Before the problem came up, the last cheques discounted for the customer were worth about N6.5bn. She paid N1.2bn into her GTBank account but Diamond Bank dishonoured its own draft in the process of cheque clearing.

The former workers wonder why the bank’s management suddenly created the impression that what happened was a one-off transaction when in fact it was a usual practice known and acknowledged by them. According to the plaintiffs, the bank had for long developed a procedure of granting same day value (immediate credit value) to the three accounts in respect of uncleared cheques drawn on other banks and paid by Sobodu into the accounts of the companies with the bank.

To prove their claim, the ex-workers cited an instance in which the bank extended a cheque discount facility of N1.278bn to Sobodu on a particular day. The particulars of the Bankers Draft were given as cheque nos. 3874355 and 3874356 for N250mn and N195mn respectively in favour of Nukep Nigeria Limited; cheque nos. 3874346 and 3874347 for N255mn and N181mn respectively in favour of Dupsob Nigeria Limited and cheque nos. 3874358 and 3874359 for the sum of N199mn and 198mn respectively in favour of Laador Nigeria Limited, an associate company of Sobodu. The N1.278bn facility far exceeded the N200mn approved limited for the customer.

On release from the EFCC net, the affected staff were placed on indefinite suspension without pay by their employer to allow for investigation. The bank then constituted a panel made up of people who knew how the account was operated. The former workers claimed that the anti-graft agency’s investigation did not find anything incriminating in the operations of the customer’s account. Sobodu, who was also arrested by the EFCC, confirmed to the agency that the bank’s management had full knowledge of how the accounts were being operated.

Dissatisfied with the EFCC’s handling of the case in Lagos, Diamond Bank ensured the case file was transferred to the Abuja office of the EFCC. The workers were again arrested, detained and later released on bail. The workers were again not indicted and the file was returned to Lagos. Just as the EFCC was still investigating, the bank took the matter to the State Security Service, SSS, in Ibadan. On investigation, the SSS could not establish any case.

As the drama continued, the suspended workers said they decided to resign their appointments with the bank, citing personal reasons. Obioru, however, attributed his to the bank’s petition to the EFCC. As he explained, they were not given fair hearing before the bank took them to the EFCC, which ran against the bank’s policy of first subjecting suspects to the Bank’s Internal Proceedings Committee for interrogation.

While the bank accepted the resignation of others, Obioru and Tobi got no response from the bank. Eventually, the workers who were initially suspended for fraud were later dismissed for negligence of duty without benefits. Surprisingly, Shade Oduntan, Group Head who was later involved in the case was sacked and said to have been paid her benefits.

Some of the affected staff told this magazine that whenever any of them secured new jobs, the Diamond Bank management wouldn’t give good reference about them. Specifically, when Obioru was offered a job in Access Bank, the Diamond Bank management refused to offer positive recommendation to enquiries. At this juncture, the only option left for the embattled former employees was to seek redress in the court. They thus hired the services of Chief Afe Babalola’s chambers. The plaintiffs are claiming against Diamond Bank (defendant) a declaration that their employment with the defendant was effectively terminated via their letters of resignation dated 22 January 2009. And that the purported dismissal of the plaintiffs via the defendant’s letters of 5 October 2009 was wrongful, malicious and of no effect whatsoever. That are also claiming the sum of N300mn as damages over fraud allegations and interest at the rate of 10 per cent from the date of judgment till the case is liquidated. Counsel to the plaintiff is Adebayo Adenipekun, a senior advocate, of Chief Afe Babalola and Co.

—Clement Oriloye

Tags:  Alasi Oloruntobi, Chukwuma Kalu, Deputy Manager; Adio Oluwasegun, Diamond Bank, Emeka Onwuka, Messrs Utieyin Obioru, Senior Banking Officer