Judgment No. 23/18 Civil Appeal No. SC 145/15 merchants and other non-tobacco customers. I was satisfied that the head of banking, for reasons best known to himself and the appellant chose to mislead this court about the nature of the interest payments that were paid by the six onshore companies”. [17] It is evident that the appellant’s witness did not make a good impression on the court a quo which found that the allegations made in his evidence contradicted the facility letters and the ELCC approvals which were produced in evidence. For instance, despite his insistence that Standard Chartered Bank PLC London was the lender, this allegation was contradicted in each facility letter wherein the appellant was stated to be the lender and the customer the borrower. Each agreement required interest to be paid to the appellant. In each facility letter the appellant obtained a tax indemnity from the borrower. [18] The gist of the evidence of Mr Young and the beneficiaries of the facility letters in question was that the beneficiaries sourced offshore funds which they borrowed from Standard Chartered Bank PLC London (the offshore bank) and repaid with interest to the offshore bank, the appellant acting merely as a conduit pipe for facilitating access to the funds and for seeking Reserve Bank approval on behalf of both the borrowers and the offshore bank. However, while their evidence corroborated each other, it conflicted with the documentary evidence placed by the appellant before the court purportedly in support of its case. [19] It seems to me that what clearly emerges from the contents of the facility letters and the ELCC approvals, read together, is that the appellant borrowed money from the offshore bank for on lending to the six onshore customers or borrowers. The six borrowers were to make payments in terms of their agreements with the appellant. In terms of these agreements all repayments were to be applied first to interest and then to capital. Nothing in the facility agreements required the borrowers to make payment to any person other than the appellant. In 9