A financial dispute involving billionaire businessman Femi Otedola and the chairman of Zenith Bank, Jim Ovia, has escalated over an alleged multibillion-naira fraud.
According to the reports, Otedola had accused Zenith Bank of illicitly using his company, Seaforce Shipping Limited’s account in the bank to trade in 2011 without his consent.
Lodging a formal complaint with the Force Criminal Investigation Department (FCID), Otedola said the anomaly was discovered recently—13 years after a whistle-blower in Zenith Bank tipped him off.
Otedola in his petition to the police, stated that even though the Seaforce Shipping’s account has been dormant since 2010, the bank continued to use the account for trading — which was utterly unknown to him
He added that his account with the bank never applied for nor took a loan, but unauthorized trading running into billions of naira continued on the account.
When he confronted Zenith Bank’s officials, they apologized.
Otedola highlighted a particular instance in which Zenith Bank acknowledged a debt of merely ₦2,278,420 in a 2018 correspondence to Seaforce’s auditors.
However, the bank statement from the same day indicated a substantially larger debt of ₦2.9 billion.
Further investigation disclosed transactions totaling over ₦16 billion charged against Seaforce’s account from 2011 to 2024.
Otedola claims the discrepancy including a substantial credit applied to the account on various dates in 2011, were unauthorized.
As a result, Seaforce is currently saddled with a debt of approximately ₦5.9 billion, with a significant portion attributed to interest charges.
In response to these issues, Otedola and associated entities, including Zenon, Luzon Oil and Gas, and Garment Care Limited, have secured a federal high court injunction against Zenith Bank and several other financial institutions.
The injunction prevents these entities from trading with shares or paying dividends linked to the involved accounts until a motion for interlocutory injunction is heard.
The FCID has already begun interrogating senior officials of Zenith Bank as part of its investigation into this high-profile financial misconduct allegation.
See the transactions below:
