Africa-Press – Tanzania. THE National Investments Company Limited (NICOL) has won a case for recovery of 580m/- loan it had redeemed in favour of Twiga Feeds Limited, which the company dealing in poultry business had obtained from Social Action Trust Fund (SATF).
This followed the decision of the High Court’s Land Division to grant a counter claim lodged by NICOL, the defendant, to oppose the suit filed by Twiga Feeds Limited and Abcon Chemicals Limited, the plaintiffs, over the payments in question.
Judge Luvanda ordered the two plaintiff companies to pay the 580m/- with interest to the defendant after dismissing the suit in question for a number of reliefs sought, ruling that they failed to prove their claims upon production of the evidence.
“The defendant (….) is entitled to recover a principal sum of 580m/- which will attract a normal simple interest of 18 percent per annum, which will run from 2009. The main suit is dismissed and the counterclaim succeeds,” he ruled.
In the suit, the plaintiffs had sought for declaration the sum of 580m/- paid by the defendant to SATF was NICOL’s contribution towards a joint venture investment project and that it was not a loan.
They sought for declaratory orders that a joint venture failure was caused by the defendant’s omission and that the interest and penalties said to have arisen from the money against the plaintiffs was a nullity and nonexistence and that the 580m/- paid by defendant was not refundable.
Furthermore, the plaintiffs pressed for orders that the mortgaged property registered on a plot at Mbezi Industrial area in Dar es Salaam was done fraudulently and was a nullity and that there should be an order for the same to be discharged.
On the other hand, the defendant in the written statement of defence, through Advocate Benjamin Mwakagamba, counter-claimed and prayed for judgment and decree against the plaintiffs and held them liable to pay a total sum of 2,403,123,177/- being unpaid balance plus interest to the loan.
In his judgment, Judge Luvanda rejected the invitation by the plaintiff that such money was not loan rather was issued by the defendant for a joint venture project relating to establishment of a higher learning institution,called Independent University of Tanzania (UTAN).
Having gone through the evidence tendered, he noted that the plaintiff avoided to be specific on the matter and there was nowhere in the letter by the defendant mentioned university and that no one knows whether the same was by design, deliberate or inadvertently omitted.
“Therefore, an argument by the plaintiff that there was a plan for a joint venture project of establishing a university is wanting,” the judge said. He, thus, took as a correct stance that the sum of 580m/- redeemed by the defendant was a loan.
