By Dipo Olowookere
Former Minister of Petroleum Resources in the immediate past administration, Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke, has forfeited $153 million she was accused of stealing from the treasury of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) during her time in office.
The alleged embezzled funds were stockpiled in Access Bank, First Bank and Sterling Bank. It was gathered that the sum of $5 million was kept with Access Bank, N9 billion with First Bank and N23 billion with Sterling Bank.
But on Friday, a Federal High Court sitting in Ikoyi, Lagos, ordered the temporary forfeiture of these monies.
In his ruling, Justice Muslim Hassan gave a 14-day ultimatum to Sterling Bank Plc and any other interested parties to prove the legitimacy of the monies before his court or else the funds would be permanently forfeited to the Federal Government of Nigeria.
The order was given in favour of an ex parte application filed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), seeking the temporary forfeiture of the funds.
Counsel to EFCC, Mr Rotimi Oyedepo, had urged Justice Hassan to order the temporary forfeiture of the funds to the Federal Government and to order Sterling Bank and others who are joined as defendants in the application, to appear in court within two weeks to explain why the funds should not be permanently forfeited to the government.
Mr Oyedepo said the application was brought in under Section 17 of the Advance Fee Fraud and Other Related Offences Act No. 14, 2006 and Section 44(2)(‘) of the 1999 Constitution, thus granting same is in the best interest of justice.
In a nine paragraph affidavit filed in support of the ex parte application, an EFCC investigator, Mr Moses Awolusi, claimed that the anti-graft agency discovered through its investigations how sometime in December 2014 Mrs Alison-Madueke invited a former Managing Director of Fidelity Bank Plc, Mr Nnamdi Okonkwo, to her office where they hatched the plan on how a cash sum of $153m would be moved from NNPC account.
According to Mr Awolusi, the former Petroleum Minister instructed Mr Okonkwo to ensure that the money was “neither credited into any known account nor captured in any transaction platforms” of Fidelity Bank. The EFCC investigator added that Mr Okonkwo accepted and implemented the instructions given by Mrs Alison-Madueke.
He went further to say that two former Group Executive Directors of Finance and Account of NNPC, B.O.N. connived with Mrs Alison-Madueke to move the cash from NNPC, Abuja to the headquarters of Fidelity Bank in Lagos.
Mr Awolusi said that in a desperate bid by Mr Okonkwo to conceal the source of the money, he (Okonkwo) upon receiving it, instructed the Country Head of Fidelity Bank, Mr Martin Izuogbe, to take $113,310,000 cash out of the money to the Executive Director, Commercial and Institutional Bank, Sterling Bank Plc, Mr Lanre Adesanya for keeps.
He added that another $40 million was taken in cash to the Executive Director, Public Sector Accountant, First Bank, Mr Dauda Lawal, to keep, that money was then taken to Stanley Lawson, a former group executive director of Finance and accounts at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation to purchase the Le Meridien in Port Harcourt.
The investigator said out of the $113,310,000 handed over to Mr Adesanya, a sum of $108,310,000 was invested in an off-balance sheet investment using Sterling Asset Management Trustees Limited, adding that a sum $108,310,000 was subsequently changed to N23b and saved in Sterling Bank.
Mr Awolusi said that EFCC had recovered the N23.4 billion in draft and had registered it as an exhibit marked, EFCC 01. The investigator said the EFCC had also recovered another $5 million out of the money kept with the MD of Access Bank Plc, Mr Herbert Wigwe.
According to him, the $5 million was recovered in a draft and had been registered as an exhibit marked, EFCC 02. Also, he alleged that First Bank’s ED had converted the $40 million kept with him to N9 billion which has also been recovered by the anti-graft agency and registered it as Exhibit EFCC 03.
Justice Hassan adjourned till January 24, 2017, for the respondents to appear in court to state why the funds should not be permanently forfeited to the Federal Government.
