Charges totaling over 112 million birr filed in court

By our staff reporter
Cosmo Trading PLC opens another string of civil charges on prominent business individuals and companies, following the court’s previous ruling in its favor.
The fresh charge now sees the company filing three separate charges, claiming a total of over 112 million birr against prominent individuals and two companies.
In the latest files taken to court on September 4, the company demanded for the stated sum to be paid from individuals and companies who gained value in connection to the lease and other means of the company’s facility located at Bole Street around Wollo Sefer.
The charge is now in close follow up to the court’s decision that lifted the interdict imposed on the property of Cosmo Trading Plc about three years ago.
Since the court lifted the ban early August, the owners of Cosmo Trading have hired their own company manager and are now pushing for a legal process to repossess properties registered in the company’s name including vehicles.
According to the latest charges, the company has filed three separate cases to reclaim over 100 million birr.
In this charge which includes; Azeb Mihretab, Temesgen Yilma and Gemechu Dinka, the company states it requires a repayment of over 55.2 million birr. The figure is associated to a bank loan and interest that was borrowed from Awash Bank under the company about four and half years ago.
The charge elaborates that the accused were using their power of administering Cosmo to secure a 61 million birr credit from Awash Bank through the nine floor building that is worth half a billion birr in credit as collateral. Of the stated amount, the first 21 million birr was settled debt that Cosmo had received from Hibret Bank.
The file added that of the remaining 40 million birr, 25 million and 7.5 million birr, in total 32.5 million birr, was transferred to JJ Properties Management, which is managed by Azeb, but with no business relations with Cosmo.
The claim further cited for the defendants to refund an amount totaling to 55 million birr, inclusive of 17.5 percent bank interest.
In its second charge, the company claimed for the repayment of the revenue that was secured from the nine floor building lease for the last three and half years.
It argued that the defendant should pay over 34.7 million birr that includes nine percent interest secured in connection with the building rent.
In its third charge, Cosmo filed its claim on Temesgen and TTH Trading plc, which Temesgen owns 50 percent share.
The charge indicated that Temesgen transferred over 15.8 million birr of income that was earned from Cosmo’s building rent, which mainly provided hotel services, from February 2018 to February 2020 to TTH, which again does not have any business relations with Cosmo.
It added that the individual, who is a prominent restaurant business owner, has also sold Cosmo’s construction machines and received an initial payment of 1.4 million birr, but failed to transfer the money to Cosmos’ account.
Cosmo requested the court for the payment in total of almost 22.8 million birr that included the nine percent service charge on its third charge.
The prominent individuals’ case has been in court for over three years with criminal charges in connection to money laundry and other illegal activity.
The criminal charge that is handled by the Attorney General is expected to appear in October.