Billionaire oil magnate, and owner of Atlas Oranto Petroleum, Prince Arthur Eze, is in big trouble in London, United Kingdom, as a court has ordered him to pay upwards of one million pounds (about N500 million) to a Richard and Deborah Conway as compensation for failing to conclude a deal to buy the British couple’s seven bedroom mansion.
Prince Eze is said to have agreed to buy the couple’s mansion for £5 million in the highly sought after Mill Hill area of north London and exchanged contracts on the home in 2015 but pulled out in the last minute.
The Conways who said they had hoped to use the money earned from the sale to buy a house in another part of the UK, in Cambridgeshire, claim in court papers, that Prince Eze failing to make payment for the house after exchanging contracts forced them to take out an expensive bridging loan to enable them conclude their move to their new home.
They also claimed to have had to sell the house at a reduced rate of £4.2 million thereby suffering an £800,000 shortfall.
They say they had no choice than to sue Prince Arthur Eze before High Court Judge Andrew Keyser who averred that the couple had a competent case. He ruled recently in favour of the couple, to the sum of £800,000 and a six-figure sum to be determined as cost. This eventually could take the judgement debt to well over £1 million.
According to documents presented to the court, the oil magnate had signed the sales document to the house and what was outstanding before he pulled out was the appendage of the date. The couple argued that signing the document makes the deal irrevocable and binding.
Presenting his case, 62 years old Richard Conway and his wife told the court they had wanted to sell their house as his retirement approached so that they can pay off all their debts and start life all over again. According to the couple, the deal was struck with Prince Arthur Eze’s go-between, his agent. According to them the only contractual term that remained outstanding was the completion date.
Prince Eze’s lawyers, however, argued that the oil magnate felt shortchanged when he found out later that the middleman who mediated the deal had taken a secret commission and as such the deal was void.
He argued further that the middleman was not known to him before he entered into the deal and that he had not viewed the property before making a down payment of £500,000 deposit. He said he had to pull out when he noticed something funny was going on.
His pleas that the drastic fall in oil prices also, despite his good intentions to buy the property, should be taken into consideration by the court, was not accepted by the judge who ruled that so long the middleman acted on behalf of the Nigerian oil magnate, the deal was binding and the £500,000 deposit should be held as part of payment for the damages caused to the British couples
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