The CEO of Tingo Group, Dozy Mmobuosi, will face charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the United States for falsifying financial statements and other records of three Tingo Group companies, including Tingo Mobile and Tingo Foods PLC.
Charges against Dozy Mmobuosi and all three of Tingo’s subsidiaries include insider trading, lying to auditors, and neglecting to disclose the sale of millions of common shares for which he was the ultimate beneficial owner, among other offenses against internal controls.
One month after the SEC formally opened an investigation into Tingo Group, the charges were announced. Additionally, the agency halted trading in the agritech company’s shares.
Part of the SEC’s filing said, “Mmobuosi made and caused the entities to make material misrepresentations about their business operations and financial success in press releases, periodic SEC filings.”
For example, Tingo Group made a major false statement in its fiscal year 2022 report about having $461.7 million in cash and cash equivalents, but the total amount in its bank accounts was less than $50.
The SEC also said, “Mmobuosi fraudulently obtained hundreds of millions in money or property through these schemes, and that Mmobuosi has siphoned off funds for his personal benefit, including purchases of luxury cars and travel on private jets, as well as an unsuccessful attempt to acquire an English Football Club Premier League team, among other things.”
Read also: The United States SEC stops trading Tingo Group’s shares
What others say about Tingo Group
In mid-2023, the Nigerian company Tingo Group was labeled as an “exceptionally obvious scam with completely fabricated financials” by Hindenburg Research, an investment research firm specializing in short sales based in the United States.
Hindenburg claimed in a statement on Tuesday that Tingo had falsified its financial statements, overstated the size of its $1.6 billion food processing facility, lied about its plans to expand into Ghana, and photo-shopped its logo onto a POS operator’s device.
Dozy Mmuobuosi, the CEO and founder of Tingo, was also charged by the research group with falsifying certain aspects of his career and personal background. Mmuobuosi had previously made headlines for his attempts to purchase Sheffield United, a recently promoted Premier League team, as well as for supporting the preseason cup of the Nigerian football league.
The real creator of the first mobile payment app in Nigeria, Deji Oguntonade, refuted Mmuobuosi’s claim to have found it, calling Mmuobuosi’s claims “totally false” and a “pure lie”. The university also denied Mmuobosi’s claim that he obtained a PhD from a Malaysian university, stating that there was no record of him in their verification system.
Mmuobuosi’s defence
Mmuobuosi asserted on social media in 2019 that he had founded “Tingo Airlines” and urged users to book flights with the company. Mmobuosi is the only shareholder of the airline, which is registered in England under the name Tingo Airlines Limited and declared a share capital of £1 billion in August 2019. According to a February report by The Athletic, Tingo Airline’s registered address was removed along with a note stating that it was “invalid or ineffective and was forged,” and there is no proof that the airline has ever operated an aircraft. The airline is also up against a current proposal to remove it from the UK’s company register for neglecting to submit necessary documentation.
The co-chairman of Tingo informed Mmuobuosi in a letter that was publicly filed with the SEC in April that he was unable to approve the company’s annual report. He stated in the letter that he felt “many critical questions, comments, and recommendations” had gone “unanswered and unheeded,” making it “necessary to recuse myself by resigning.”
In the past, Tingo has asserted that Tingo DMCC, its agricultural export company, is expected to generate more than $1.34 billion in export revenue by the third quarter of 2023. a claim greater than the total value of Nigeria’s agricultural exports in 2022. Tingo DMCC was not included in the Nigerian customs database, according to Hindenburg as well.
Tingo further states that it established the NWASSA market in Ghana, which enables farmers to sell goods at retail or wholesale without the intervention of middlemen. Hindenburg discovered that the NWASSA website “led nowhere” and was nonfunctional.
Additionally, Tingo asserts that TingoPay, its payment group, offers Point of Sale (PoS) and other merchant products. The research team discovered that this was untrue, though. Neither the Apple Store nor the Google Play Store have any links to the TingoPay app. Additionally, the POS website images used by Tingo were stolen from PocketPOS, an Indian payments company.
Additionally, Tingo stated that it generated $128 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2023 from its mobile handset leasing, call, and data segments. It further stated that these services are made possible by a partnership with Airtel Nigeria. They assert that the licence type was nonexistent prior to June 2023. Despite the company’s claims of having 12 million mobile customers, Hindenburg said that investigations with the Nigerian Communications Commission revealed no record of Tingo being a mobile licensee.
Tingo asserted to have partnered with a well-known Nigerian bank in 2021 in order to grow its mobile offerings, giving rise to TingoPay, a payment group. The bank refuted the claim two days following the announcement of the partnership.