Ghanaian entrepreneur Nana Kwame Bediako has asked the High Court in London to overturn a $14.9 million judgment. He alleges that it was obtained using a document “procured by fraud”.
The document is a deed of indemnity that Cola Holdings Limited, the London property investment company of the Cola family, put before the court in its original claim.
The deed, dated 18 January 2018, bears Mr Bediako’s signature. Cola Holdings relied on it to hold him liable for half of an $18 million loan for No. 1 Oxford Street, a serviced apartment development in Accra.
Mr Bediako says the deed is not genuine. According to his filing: the signature “was not made by him”, and he “does not know how a signature in his name came to be on the deed of indemnity”; he was in Nigeria on the day the deed was supposedly signed and witnessed at his Accra office; “the most likely explanation” is that an electronic version of his signature was used “without Mr Bediako’s approval and without his knowledge”; Cola Holdings “either knew, or were recklessly indifferent to the fact, that representations made to the court were false”.
In January 2025 the High Court ordered Mr Bediako to pay $14.9 million on the strength of Cola Holdings’ case. He now asks the court to set that judgment aside and to award him compensation for his losses.
The Times reports that the filing also points to a Rolex watch Azad Cola is said to have given Reginald Sittie, Mr Bediako’s then assistant, in spring 2018. Mr Bediako does not “allege a bribe”.
He sees the gift as “evidence of a relationship in which Mr Sittie was more willing to act on Mr Cola’s wishes than a disinterested employee would be”.
Cola Holdings “categorically denies the claims made”, its representative Lawrence Cartier said. The family will file “a comprehensive defence” in the coming weeks.
