Secrets Reporters
On 12 February 2025, a dissolved company was carried back before the High Court in Tortola. Court filings exclusively obtained by SecretsReporters show that Mobolaji Oludamilola Balogun, founder and Chief Executive of Chapel Hill Denham, filed a fixed date claim in the Commercial Division of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court that day, asking the court to declare the dissolution of Bentley Property Holdings Limited void and to restore the name of the company to the Register of Companies of the British Virgin Islands.
Balogun is the son of the late Otunba Subomi Balogun, the founder of First City Monument Bank, and he sits as Chairman of Unilever Nigeria, having earlier chaired Lafarge Africa. In the claim, numbered BVIHCOM2025/0061, he gives his address as 5, Ojora Road, Ikoyi, Lagos, the Registrar of Corporate Affairs of the British Virgin Islands stands as defendant, and the court recorded fees of 811.84 paid on the filing.
The company at the centre of the claim, Bentley Property Holdings Limited, carries business company number 1488111. The application is brought under section 218 of the BVI Business Companies Act 2004, the provision under which the court is asked to declare a dissolution void. Balogun asks that the dissolution be rescinded and declared void. Under the terms set out in the claim, he is to file a sealed copy of the order with the Registrar within sixty days of the court making it, pay all fees and penalties due and payable for the company, and pay the costs of the Registrar in the proceedings, whereupon the Registrar is directed to restore the name of the company to the Register and issue a Certificate of Restoration to it.
The restoration he seeks is to take effect from the date and time the sealed order is filed, and on the name being restored the company is to be deemed never to have been dissolved or struck from the Register. The claim asks that any property of the company, other than money, which the Crown received and had not disposed of at the date of the dissolution, be restored to and vest in the company, and that any money received by the Crown under section 220(1) of the Act in respect of the company be paid to it out of the Consolidated Fund. A sealed copy of the order is also to be served on the Financial Secretary.
The same Bentley Property Holdings Limited stands on the Register of Overseas Entities in the United Kingdom, under entry OE027242, the register on which overseas companies with land interests in Britain declare the persons who own and control them. That entry names Mobolaji Oludamilola Balogun, of 10 Bankole Oki Street, Ikoyi, Lagos, as a beneficial owner of more than 25 per cent of the company.
Balogun signed the certificate of truth on the claim form himself, certifying that he believes the facts stated in the form are true, and his legal practitioners on the filing are Vistra Legal (BVI) Limited of the Vistra Corporate Services Centre, Wickham’s Cay II, Road Town, Tortola, acting under file reference 3-1019-23. The papers contain the application and no order of the court, and the claim form does not state the date on which Bentley Property Holdings Limited was dissolved or the grounds on which it was struck off.
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