This video revealed the transaction between Farouk Lawan and Billionaire Femi Otedola.
Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts
Alleged $1m fraud: EFCC raids Daniel’s associate’s office
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission yesterday raided the office of one of the associates of the ex-Governor of Ogun State, Otunba Gbenga Daniel on Victoria Island in Lagos.
The suspect, Wale Ajisebutu is the Managing Director of 21st Century. The raid was in respect of alleged $1m belonging to the state allegedly diverted into the telecommunications company.
A source said: “The said $1m was allegedly diverted from Ogun State’ government’s domiciliary account in a bank.
“Some petitioners alleged that the money was actually stolen from the accoint. “The suspect, who has been arrested, is still being interrogated.”.
The Head of Media and Publicity of the EFCC, Mr. Femi Babafemi, said: “We have arrested Ajisebutu and we are interacting with him over the $1m.”
NEW!!! 3 Ex-governors arrested in Nigeria by EFCC
BBC Reports that Nigeria's anti-corruption agency has arrested three former state governors for allegedly embezzling funds amounting to $615m (£400m).
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) said the former governors of Ogun, Oyo and Nasarawa states faced a series of charges.
They are likely to appear in court in the next few days.
Correspondents say the EFCC has made high-profile arrests before but has found it hard to make charges stick.
Nigeria's is one of the world's biggest oil producers but most of its people live in poverty.
Under Nigeria's federal system, state governors enjoy huge powers and control budgets bigger than those of some neighbouring African countries.
'Abused state contracts'
Former Ogun state governor Olugbenga Daniel, Adebayo Alao-Akala of Oyo state and Aliyu Akwe Doma of Nasarawa state were arrested on Thursday, EFCC spokesman Femi Babafemi said.
During their time in office, the men are alleged to have abused state contracts and diverted government money for their personal use.
Mr Babafemi said Mr Daniel is accused of defrauding the state of $387m. He said Mr Alao-Akala and Mr Doma each face $167m and $120m fraud allegations. All three men are members of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP).
The BBC's Jonah Fisher in Lagos says the EFCC has arrested high-profile figures before, but has so far been less successful in making the charges stick.
Nigeria's justice system is painfully slow and ill-equipped to deal with complex financial cases, our correspondent says.
Ibori Remanded In UK Prison Till 2012 As Judge Postpones Trial Date
The London trial of former Delta state governor James Ibori has been delayed until 2012 after his defence team successfully argued they hadn't been given enough time to prepare.
Mr Ibori, facing 14 charges of fraud and money laundering, will remain in prison until the trial, now set to begin on 13 February, the court decided.
Members of the public in the gallery also got a hint of some of the legal arguments Mr Ibori intends to deploy in an attempt to have the case dismissed before the trial begins.
In legal hearings before the trial, defence team members told the court, they will argue that he cannot be tried in the UK because a Nigerian court has already decided there is no evidence he has committed any crime in Nigeria.
Mr Ibori appeared in court wearing a creased grey linen jacket and shirt without a tie. He had freshly shaved, getting rid of the small moustache he at one time sported. He waved to supporters, and at one point flashed a smile at the police officers who have worked to amass tens of thousand pages of evidence against him.
Benjamin Aina QC of Mr Ibori's defence team, told Southwark crown court they could not begin the trial as planned in November because they need more time to go through the approximately 65,000 pages of evidence and travel to Nigeria to speak to witnesses.
"Mr Ibori has the right to be competently defended" Judge Anthony Pitts said, setting the new date.
Mr Ibori's defence team did not object to the prosecution's request to extend the time Mr Ibori could be held in custody. Without such agreement prisoners in custody on remand for non violent offences can be released on bail after six months.
Mr Ibori was extradited to the UK from Dubai in April, and prosecutors decided he would be tried alongside a co-defendant, Emmanuel Preko, who was already slated to be tried in November.
But Mr Ibori's Barrister, Nicholas Purnell QC, referred to in court by other members of the defence team -and the Judge- as "one of the finest legal minds of this generation", told the court he had been forced to withdraw his services from Mr Ibori because of the schedule.
"This has caused some considerable distress to the defendant," he said.
The delay to the start date allowed Mr Purnell to represent Mr Ibori as originally planned, he said.
The prosecution said the defence team had already had adequate time to prepare, as many of the legal representatives had also worked on the trials involving associates of Mr Ibori. His wife, mistress and lawyer, were all convicted in London last year.
Much of the complex evidence has been agreed over the course of the previous trials, the prosecution said.
"One wonders what the defence team has been doing these past months," Sasha Wass QC told the court.
Before the trial the court will convene to hear legal arguments, where Mr Ibori will apply to have the case thrown out.
Mr Aina said it was not clear to him that what Mr Ibori is accused of was considered illegal in Nigeria.
"Due to differences in practice between here and Nigeria, it has not yet been established that whatever did or did not take place in Nigeria is in fact criminal, or is malpractice that falls short of criminality," Mr Aina said.
Judge Pitts said he received this statement with "some surprise".
Prosecutors said an independent expert on Nigerian law had given evidence in previous trials that the crimes committed by Ibori's associates were illegal in Nigeria.
"It doesn't seem to us that they will be able to say that what Ibori did; stole, lied, cheated, would not be offences in Nigeria," Miss Wass said.
The public gallery was full of Mr Ibori's supporters, including Chief P D Oboh, who hails from Mr Ibori's home village.
Also in court it was noticed that the court usher, the official monitoring the recording of proceedings, and the guard who brought Mr Ibori up from the cells are Nigerians living in London.
They will presumably have a ringside seat to observe the trial when it starts next year.
Mr. Ibori faces 14-count charge relating to money laundering in the UK of billions of naira stolen from the treasury of Delta state.
Presidential Election Bribery: Kutigi denies Wikileaks report
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| Kutigi |
Former Chief Justice of the Federation of Nigeria, CJN, Justice Idris Kutigi, has denied the report posted on the Wikileaks’ website and published by a national newspaper that he took or rejected bribes from agents of the Federal Government to sway the 2007 presidential election Supreme Court judgment in favour of a particular candidate.
Wikileaks had in its report, said: “Kutigi appears to be reacting strongly to several credibly reported attempts to sideline him or to co-opt him for political purposes. A member of the chief justice’s staff told PolCouns that the presidency had attempted to bribe Kutigi twice before the elections.
”According to the same source, the second attempt came when the president’s former special adviser, Chief Andy Uba, visited Kutigi’s office on April 10 accompanied by Anambra businessman Emeka Offor.
”The aide says the two offered Kutigi N200 million to drop the suit by Atiku and leave him off the ballot,” the report had said.
But Kutigi denied the allegations, saying. “It’s not true.”
He told an online publication, yesterday, “Neither the Etsu Nupe, Dr. Andy Uba nor Chief Emeka Offor ever brought any bribe to me.
”No one from government or anywhere offered me any bribe. I don’t know where they got this story. Please I am not a politician. I am in my village now,” he added.
Ex-Convict Alamieyeseigha To Forfeit $600,000 US Mansion, $400,000 Cash, As US Justice Department Implements “Kleptocracy Initiative”
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| DSP Alamieyeseigha |
Former governor of Bayelsa and convicted money launderer, DSP Alamieyeseigha will be losing his mansion in the Potomac area of Maryland, as he could not pay his annual real estate tax to the state.
Mr. Alamieyeseigha, popular known as “Alams,” bought the property from his looting of Bayelsa State resources. That led to his arrest in the United Kingdom in 2006, from which he jumped bail dressed as a grandmother.
Officials of the state of Maryland Assessment and Taxation department told SaharaReporters that Alams owed the state some $10,000 in real estate taxes.
They said the property, which is located 504 Pleasant Drive, Rockville, MD 20850-5879 belongs to Solomon & Peters Ltd, an offshore front company used by the ex-convict to purchase the property in 2003 while he was the governor of Bayelsa state. Solomon $ Peters Limited in registered in the British Virgin Islands.
Alams’ legal troubles led to the elevation of Goodluck Jonathan to the governorship of that state, and soon after, to national prominence when he was singlehandedly selected by President Olusegun Obasanjo as presidential running mate to Umaru Yar’Adua. He was later arrested in the UK for money laundering but fled to Nigeria, where he was arrested and prosecuted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission after members of the Bayelsa State assembly impeached him.
In 2005, Mr. Alamieyeseigha’s daughter, Oyindounbra, also bought a house in Whittier, California, where she attended a Community College. In that same year, she sold the house for $1.7 before relocating to Nigeria.
Maryland officials told SaharaReporters that Mr. Alamiseyeseigha has not paid his property taxes for almost a year.
Interestingly, the same property in Maryland is being recovered by the Obama administration through the US Department of Justice’s “Kleptocracy Initiative”. In March this year, the office of the US Attorney General filed to forfeit the assets of Mr. Alamieyeseigha in the US. The Potomac home, which is valued at $600,000, and another $400,000 belonging to the disgraced Governor was also found in a brokerage account at the Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC account in Massachusetts.
If and when the civil proceedings are concluded, the US government plans to repatriate the stolen monies to Nigeria.
“Funds of this nature that are repatriated to Nigeria ought to be put directly into specific public projects that are negotiated between the United Nations and the Nigeria government,” a newspaper columnist told SaharaReporters today. “Otherwise, how does one know that the funds do not return to Alams through Nigeria’s own Kleptocracy Highway?”
N40bn loan scam: Bankole wants House of Reps Clerk prosecuted
The embattled former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr Dimeji Bankole, yesterday, urged an Abuja High Court in Apo, to compel the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, to prosecute the Clerk of the House, Mr Sani Omolori, over the alleged N40 billion loan scam.
Bankole, who made this plea on a day he sought an order to disqualify the EFCC lawyer, Mr. Festus Keyamo, from handling his trial, further prayed presiding Justice Suleiman Belgore to go ahead and quash the entire 17-count criminal charge against him for want of evidence.
The ex-speaker contended that it was due to an “accumulated animosity” the prosecuting counsel, Keyamo, had for him since 2008 that he deliberately dragged only himself and his erstwhile deputy, Usman Bayero Nafada, to court over actions he said were perfected by the clerk and other management staff of the sixth session of the House of Representatives.
The 1st accused persons, therefore, beseeched the trial judge to consider antecedents of the EFCC lawyer and several petitions he raised against him ab-initio and declare him unfit to prosecute the case objectively.
Bankole, who argued through his lead counsel, Chief Adegboyega Awomolo, SAN, insisted that going by the proof of evidence tendered in court by the anti-graft agency, the Clerk, being the chief accounting officer of the House, ought to have been arrested and prosecuted over the alleged breach of sections 111 and 112 of Financial Regulations, 2001, pertaining to the manner the said controversial loan was secured.
On the qualification of Keyamo to prosecute him, Bankole submitted that under section 174 of the 1999 constitution, only the Attorney General of the Federation, AGF, can initiate criminal proceeding against anyone charged with such offence as was levelled at him, noting that the prosecuting counsel, being a private legal practitioner, failed to obtain the requisite fiat before proceeding to court.
In his argument, the 2nd accused person, Nafada, through his counsel, Mr. Tayo Oyetibo, SAN, also challenged the powers of the EFCC counsel to prosecute him over the alleged offence without an express permission from the AGF.
Meantime, Justice Belgore, yesterday, ordered the EFCC to release the international passport of the 2nd accused persons to enable him to travel to Saudi Arabia in August for the lesser Hajj.
He was, however, ordered to hand back the documents to the EFCC before the 3rd week of September, even as the case was adjourned till October 21 for the court to rule on the application seeking to disqualify Keyamo from the matter.
It would be recalled that the accused persons who are facing trial over alleged roles they played in a N40 billion loan scam, had on June 13 pleaded not guilty to a 17-count criminal charge preferred against them.
EFCC specifically alleged that they breached public trust by agreeing to approve the allowances and ‘running costs’ of members of the 6th session of House of Representatives in violation of the approved remuneration package for political, public and judicial office holders by the Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission, as well as, the extant Revised Financial Regulations of the Federal Government of Nigeria, 2009, and thereby committed an offence contrary to section 97(1) of the Penal Code Act, Cap 532, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria (Abuja) 1990 and punishable under section 315 of the same Penal Code Act.
The anti-graft commission further alleged that the accused persons, being entrusted with House of Representatives’ Account No. 00390070000018 with the United Bank of Africa, Plc and the Overhead Account of the House of Representatives with First Bank of Nigeria, Plc, properties of the Federal Government of Nigeria, dishonestly used the accounts to obtain loans totaling to about N40 billion.
Fighting corruption: Anyaoku calls for removal of immunity clause
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| Chief Emeka Anyaoku |
Anyaoku made this call at the Distinguished Management Lecture organised by the Nigerian Institute of Management, NIM, in celebration of its 50th anniversary with theme “Nigeria at 50 – The Challenges of Nationhood,” where he said the removal of the clause would wipe out corruption from all facets of the Nigerian nation.
According to him, “when immunity clause is removed, all forms of corruption will drastically reduce in Nigeria. Since the immunity comes from the top, the other people will follow suit. The President and the Governors should not have any immunity from criminal offences.
They should only have immunity for civil offences because constant law suits on civil offences will distort the day-to-day running of the country.”
On National Conference, he said an appropriately representative conference of the Nigerian people should be constituted to consider how Nigerian’s present constitution could be reviewed and amended to reinforce progress towards the Nigerian nation.
He said Nigeria at 50 as at last birthday is yet to grapple with the challenges which are retarding the possibilities for its national growth and development, while stating that Nigeria still faces a number of challenges that it faced at independence.
According to him, prominent among the challenges is the consolidation of sense and reality of Nigeria as a nation. He further said that these facts were brought to fore in the debates and controversies that preceded the April 2011 Presidential election.
Anyaoku noted that the continuing emphasis on ‘zones’ and ‘sections’ in the appointment to political offices, rather than on qualification and competence, regrettably showed that for a significant number of Nigerians, Nigeria is yet to arrive as a nation, adding that the patriotic love for the Nigerian nation should be the driving force behind its political leaders and public office holders.
He enthused that much of the talk about Nigeria’s greatness is still in futuristic terms, whilst stressing that the nation has so far essentially failed to make its numerous potentials a reality.
He also said until the vast majority of the citizens are, in their pursuit of self-fulfillment, driven by an innate desire to serve their fatherland, the Nigerian nation would continue to be short-changed in terms of reaping the full benefits of its abundant human and material resources.
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