There are strong indications that the consortium of 13 banks, involved in Etisalat Nigeria’s $1.2bn loan is seeking the Federal Government’s intervent
There are strong indications that the consortium of 13 banks, involved in Etisalat Nigeria’s $1.2bn loan is seeking the Federal Government’s intervention through the EFCC to investigate what the company did with the loan. The banks are of the opinion that the loans were siphoned as there was no proof of what the company did with the loan.
The affected banks had rolled out a lot of viable options to Etisalat for the loan to be restructured, but was rejected by the company. Now the banks are saying they are not into telecommunications and have no intention of running Etisalat.
“All we want is to recover the loans; we cannot write off the loans as being demanded by Etisalat, because the company is viable,” a source stated.
According to the source, the company wants an injection of new capital, and this has been suggested to the majority shareholder. The source said the government should investigate the matter with all seriousness, to dig out the truth.
UAE’s Etisalat on June 20 said that it had been instructed to transfer its 45 percent stake in Etisalat Nigeria to a loan trustee. Etisalat said it had been notified to transfer its stake by June 23. It said the stake had a carrying value of zero on its books.
In the last three months, Etisalat Nigeria had been in talks with the consortium of banks, to restructure a $1.2bn-dollar loan, after missing repayments. The loan is a seven-year facility, agreed with 13 banks in 2013, to refinance a $650m loan, and fund expansion of the telecommunications network.
Although the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), stepped into the fray to prevent a takeover by the banks, those discussions failed to produce an agreement on restructuring the debt.
Punch
