A Federal High Court sitting in Lagos has ordered parties involved in MTN versus Nigerian Communications Commission case to maintain status quo following a mareva injunction by the Attorney General of the Federation, seeking to bar the company from emptying its accounts in 21 commercial banks in Nigeria.
Trial judge, Justice Idris Mohammed told both parties to maintain status quo ante bellum pending the determination of the suit and adjourned till January 22, 2016 for hearing.
He said “An order is hereby made directing the parties cited herein to maintain the status quo ante bellum pending further hearing.”
The AGF’s injunction read “an order of mareva injunction restraining the aforementioned banks from releasing, further releasing any funds, making sale, transfer or payment of any monies or dealing in any manner whatsoever with any and all monies maintained by the plaintiff/respondent (MTN) or its agents, privies, subsidiaries, sister companies or the like in the aforestated banks that will alter, decline or reduce the amount of the first defendant’s/applicant’s fine against the plaintiff/respondent in the sum of N1,040,000,000,000 which has remained wholly unsatisfied, pending the determination of the motion on notice.”
Currently the maintain status quo order will prevent MTN from accessing its funds in the country.
The counsel for the AGF, Mr. Dipo Okpeseyi, SAN, in a 14-paragraph affidavit in support of the application warns that “Unless this court urgently entertains this application, the plaintiff/respondent would move its funds out of Nigeria, being the jurisdiction of this honourable court, and thereby frustrate the enforcement of the fine in the likely event that this honourable court sanctions the imposition of the fine.”
Okpeseyi insisted that MTN was under an obligation to pay the N1.04 trillion fine, because it was NCC’s administrative decision, which remained final unless it was reviewed by the commission or nullified by the court.
The maintain status quo order is likely to prevent MTN from accessing its bank accounts in the country.