by Janet Johnson
The founder of the Living Faith Church, popularly known as Winners’ Chapel, David Oyedepo, has been sued by a stock brokerage firm, Valueline Securities and Investment Limited over an alleged breach of agreement on a N9billion investment.
The firm along with its Managing Director, Samuel Enyinnaya, is seeking an order of the court to compel Oyedepo and others to pay them the sum of N1.86bn jointly and severally as professional fees and damages.
Besides Oyedepo, the other defendants in the suit filed before a Federal High Court in Lagos are Oyedepo’s wife, Abiola; his children and blood relatives, Priscillia, Jesutobi, Makinde and Isaac. Others are the World Mission Agency Inc., which is the overall ruling organ of the Winners’ Chapel; Covenant University, Ota, Ogun State; and the Nigerian Stock Exchange.
In a statement of claim, the plaintiffs claimed that Oyedepo and the other defendants entered an Investment Portfolio Management Agreement with them and appointed them as the portfolio managers to oversee and to ensure the profitability of the said investment worth about N9bn in the Nigerian Stock Exchange.
According to the plaintiffs, it was agreed that 2.25 per cent of the net asset value of the portfolio and an annual incentive fee of 10 per cent of the returns on the investment would be paid to the plaintiffs.
The plaintiffs said that in order to enhance profitability of the investment, they went ahead to obtain some margin loans from some Nigerian banks, which turned out to be a great boost to the investment.
According to them, trouble started when the first defendant wanted to buy his first private jet and the World Mission Agency Inc. ordered the sale of majority of the securities in the investment portfolio, and that despite the professional advice to the contrary, the plaintiffs were made to sell the securities to raise the N3bn needed for the jet, a development which brought about huge losses to the investment.
He explained that the sale of securities coupled with the global economic meltdown, which caused stock market across the globe to crash at the time, the investment recorded losses.
“In a bid to avoid their financial obligations to the plaintiffs, Oyedepo and his organizations wrote a petition to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission alleging fraud and embezzlement against the plaintiffs,” the plaintiff said.
Valueline said the EFCC found them innocent after six years of investigation but they alleged that Oyedepo had gone ahead to use his religious denominational connection to drag them before the NSE on the grounds that the investment portfolio was mismanaged and that the margin loans were taken by the plaintiffs without the consent of the 1st to tenth defendants.
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