Judgment No. 23/18
Civil Appeal No. SC 145/15
only factors linking the appellant to the matter are the facility letters which were drawn in the
name of the appellant but even that did not establish that the appellant either received or accrued
the right to interest on these loans as all payments were made directly to the offshore bank
Standard Chartered PLC in London.
[16]
On behalf of the respondent Mr Magwaliba submitted that the real issue for
determination was whether the appellant had discharged the onus of establishing, on the
evidence placed before the court, that there was no causa for the payment of interest to it by
the onshore borrowers and that such interest was in fact not earned by the appellant. That onus,
he submitted, was not discharged by the appellant. He drew the court’s attention to the
unsatisfactory nature of the evidence led by the appellant from its head of corporate banking,
Mr Young, as found by the court a quo, in particular, the following remarks at page 25 of the
judgment:
“There was a plethora of disquieting features in the testimony of the head of corporate
banking. He disputed that any money was paid to the appellant by the offshore lender
contrary to the stipulation in clause 3 of the MRPA. He disputed that the appellant
borrowed funds from the offshore lender, again contrary to all the approvals he
produced that emanated from the central bank. The lender was clearly indicated as the
offshore related party and the [appellant] the borrower and in later approvals the
beneficiary as the appellant. The unexplained discrepancy between the first facility
letter and the acceptance agreement in respect of the first tobacco company did not
engender confidence in his testimony. More importantly, the failure to produce the
acceptance agreements of all the other facility letters save for the one in respect of the
conglomerate, exhibit 7, and rate fix documents in respect of all the facility letters
undermined his credibility. The impression left in my mind was that the appellant was
deliberately hiding information in corporate underbrush. Similarity of all the letters
save for the first two for the first tobacco company with the ones the appellant admitted
were provided with local funds undermined the appellant’s case. There was no
reference to any evidence account in these facility letters. The choice of law clause
conferred jurisdiction on the local courts. The calculation of the computation of the
interest rate in respect of the cement manufacturer demonstrated that it was receiving
onshore finance from the appellant.
In my view, it was simply incredible that the appellant did not have the capacity to fund
the requirements of the conglomerate. It admitted to funding the conglomerate in the
aggregate sum of US$30 million from onshore funds. In any event it held approvals
from the ELCC to on lend funds borrowed offshore to both tobacco and seed cotton
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