Paris refund deal: Firm assembles SANs to tackle Rivers gov’t

A firm is set to gather a team of Senior Advocates of Nigeria to face the Rivers State Government over its failure to pay its commission on the Paris Club refund. A chartered accounting firm, Messrs J.O. Atunbi & Co. is claiming that Rivers State failed to pay its 18 percent agreed commission for recovering […]

A firm is set to gather a team of Senior Advocates of Nigeria to face the Rivers State Government over its failure to pay its commission on the Paris Club refund.

A chartered accounting firm, Messrs J.O. Atunbi & Co. is claiming that Rivers State failed to pay its 18 percent agreed commission for recovering N100 billion out of $462. 593bn said to be excess deductions from the state’s loans by the Federal Government.

The firm wants the lawyers to seek for an injunction freezing the accounts of the state government.

Controversy had trailed the payment of percentage to firms that helped states across the country to get the refunds from the Paris-London Club since President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration began to make the transfers in tranches.

The firm, however, said it did its assigned work to help the state government recover the over deductions accruing to the state after it was engaged in 2014 via a letter signed by then Commissioner of Finance in the state, Chamberlain Peterside.

“The above named company was appointed as consultants by some state governments to carry out reconciliation and recovery of all over deductions on foreign loans (1995 to 2006),” it said.

“We diligently executed the contract per the letter of engagement, finalised the reconciliation and submitted both the interim reports, progress reports and final report on the completion of the work,” it also said.