By On September 9, 2019, a lawyer from Harbour Chambers walked into the High Court of the Virgin Islands carrying papers signed in the name of Mike Adeniyi Isola Adenuga. The address on the claim form was Plot 212/213, 2nd Avenue, Banana Island, Lagos, the billionaire’s own doorstep. The mission was to bring a dead company back to life.
Honeyman Properties Inc, company number 432629, had been dissolved on November 1, 2016. For nearly three years it sat off the register. The application asked the court to void the dissolution and restore the company, and, in the clause that carries the weight of the whole filing, to order that any property which was not disposed of on the date of the dissolution of the Company be returned to it upon restoration.
SecretsReporters scrutiny of the filing shows it was brought under section 218 of the BVI Business Companies Act 2004, and it asks the court to treat the death as though it never happened, that the company be deemed to continue in existence as if it had not been dissolved or struck off. Adenuga swore an affidavit in support of the application, and a draft of the order he wanted was attached. The court stamped the papers the next morning, September 10, 2019. Fees paid: $811.84.
What the papers do not say is what Honeyman Properties held. The company’s first name says property plainly enough: it was registered on February 19, 2001 as Nitra Properties Inc, before it took the Honeyman name. Beyond the name, the filing is silent on the assets the restoration was designed to recover.
Britain’s own registers carry the story the court papers leave open. On February 10, 2023, Honeyman Properties Inc was registered at Companies House as an overseas entity, number OE025388, and the incorporation details on that register give its British Virgin Islands company number as 432629, the very company Adenuga went to court over. An overseas entity takes a place on that register for one reason: it owns land in the United Kingdom. A company struck off and dissolved in 2016 could not have registered in 2023. The register names three beneficial owners, every one of them at 18 Karimu Kotun Street, Victoria Island, Lagos. Mike Adenuga stands first, his control notified from March 6, 2001, weeks after the company was born, on the ground of significant influence or control. Afolasade Michael-Adenuga was notified on July 29, 2021, holding more than 25 per cent of the shares, more than 25 per cent of the voting rights, the right to appoint or remove a majority of the board, and significant influence or control. Titilola Joyce Adewale was notified the same day, for significant influence or control. A London law firm, Oak Legal of Wyndham Road, verified the filing. The register carries that single filing and nothing after it: the entity’s annual update statement fell due on February 23, 2024 and was never filed.
The land itself is named in HM Land Registry’s own record of overseas companies that own property in England and Wales. Honeyman Properties Inc is the registered proprietor of title NGL788425, the freehold of 39 Circus Road, St John’s Wood, London NW8 9LG, one of the most expensive residential streets in Britain. The company has stood as proprietor since October 1, 2001, the same year it was incorporated, and its address on the title is 86 West Green Road, London N15 5PD. That is the property the return clause in Adenuga’s 2019 application was written to reach: whatever the company held when it was dissolved in 2016 was to come back to it on restoration, and the house at 39 Circus Road is what it held, before the dissolution and after it.
The court file in hand does not include the judge’s order, and the BVI court’s own record of the outcome sits outside the papers published with the claim. What London’s registers establish needs no order to read. The company Adenuga asked the court to bring back from the dead stands on the Register of Overseas Entities today, and the St John’s Wood freehold it acquired in 2001 stands in its name. The application itself remains his, made in his full name and at his own Banana Island address, on the public record of a court few Nigerians will ever see.
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