A London High Court today indicted former Managing Director of Intercontinental Bank Plc, Erastus Akingbola , ordering him to refund over $1 billion (639.75 million pounds) to Access Bank Plc.

Intercontinental Bank was one of the nine distressed commercial banks in Nigeria bailed out by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), before Access Bank acquired the bank in 2011.

Justice Burton, who passed the ruling, said that Akingbola and his accomplice owed Access Bank 145 billion naira ($900 million) due to fraudulent trading in Intercontinental Bank shares and 16 billion naira ($99 million) paid through Intercontinental to Tropics Group.

According to a Reuters report, Justice Burton said: “As the Tropics Payments Claim is concerned, and as for his strategy for the company to buy its own shares … quite apart from being contrary to Nigerian law, it was simply wrong-headed, and was plainly a substantial contributing factor to the collapse of the bank.”

In Nigeria, Erastus Akingbola is also on trial before Justice Habeeb Abiru of the Lagos High Court for an alleged 47.1 billion naira ($300 million) theft.

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