WANTAWAY FRAUDSTER, SAM AFOLABI WHO DUPED NIGERIANS BILLIONS THROUGH HIS COMPANY, EATRICH FARMS AND ESCAPED STARTS ANOTHER 148BILLION DOLLAR DUBIOUS INVESTMENT PROGRAM
Remember Sam Afolabi, the Chief Executive Officer of Eatrich Farms, who fled Nigeria following the collapse of his agritech company that flung Nigerian investors and former staff into a financial mess in 2021?
Afolabi, who also made his business partners wallow in multi-million naira debts, is back with another business. This time, it’s a hardware and building materials company called Century Factory Limited. FIJ’s check through the company’s Instagram page reveals that it deals in marble, tiles, roofing sheets, furniture and paints.
A Facebook post Afolabi shared on Thursday revealed that Century Factory, worth $148.70 billion, would begin a call for shareholders on Saturday, June 1, 2024. According to Afolabi, 50 shareholders would co-own the company, as approved by the Company and Allied Matters Act
(CAMA).
THE SHADY BUSINESS PAST OF SAM AFOLABI
From having his employees arrested for staging a protest to demand their unpaid salaries to disappearing with investors’ life savings, many Nigerians suffered great losses after the collapse of Afolabi’s Eatrich Farms in 2021.
Eatrich Farms relied on investors’ capital to farm and produce food. However, its downfall began in the last quarter of 2021 when Afolabi, the founder, stopped paying investors.
In September 2021, FIJ reported how the Lagos State Police Command Headquarters arrested and detained six old staff and investors because they dared ask him to settle his N1 billion indebtedness to them.
In March 2022, FIJ reported that Afolabi fraudulently obtained an N88 million loan. To do this, he connived with Sterling Bank officials to secure the loan through his former employees’ accounts without their knowledge.
When Afolabi mandated every employee to open a Sterling Bank account the previous year, they thought he wanted to pay them via the new accounts. They would only discover too late that he wanted them to apply for loans.
One of the former staff told FIJ that after the company crashed, he received the biggest shock of his life in December 2021 when Sterling Bank sent a reminder that he had not made a payment on his N2.2 million loan, something he never applied for.
This April 2022 report by FIJ also detailed how police arrested Timi Afolabi, Sam’s younger brother and employee, before Sam fled with investors’ funds.
A source, who did not want to be named, had told FIJ that Sam had instructed his brother to shut down the company without informing other employees about the crisis it was facing.
“But Timi would not shut down the company. When he eventually realised the company was in crisis, he decided to sell some assets so he could pay some of the investors. When the company eventually crashed, the investors came for his head. This was because he was the founder’s only family member who was reachable,” the source said.
“When Timi decided to honour an invitation by the Alagbon Police Command, the officers on duty decided to arrest him. Sam did nothing about it. His wife borrowed money to help free him, but the move did not work. After standing trial at an Abuja High Court in December 2021, he was sentenced to eight months in prison.”
In November 2022, FIJ reported that Eatrich’s failure to repay the loans it took for its Green Africa project caused the debts to fall back on the people who had registered with the company in 2020.
Mobolaji Abi, one of the affected persons, revealed that the Green Africa project aimed to establish a catfish farming industry on several acres of land. “To get funds from Sterling Bank, EatRich used about 100 of us to collect N2.3 million each,” Abi told FIJ.
Following the crisis that befell the company and the founder’s disappearance, Abi received an email from Sterling Bank, stating that he owed N2.3 million — a sum of money he did not spend.
Source: FIJ
