A Federal High Court sitting in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, has turned down the bail application for the defendants in the N8 billion mutilated currency fraud case involving some official of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and some commercial banks.
The court was presided over by Justice J. O. Abdulmalik.
When the matter came up yesterday for ruling on the bail application and continuation of trial, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) presented two witnesses.
They are: Mr Ademola Oni, a former banker with Wema Bank and Mr Edwin Ennah, a retired Head of Currency Possessing and Disposal Unit at the CBN.
Oni had entered into a plea bargaining to regain his freedom from custody while Ennah was among those who were arrested when the alleged fraud was detected in 2014.
He was later released.
Oni told the court that he contacted Olaniran Muniru and Togun Kayode when he visited the CBN to deposit some money.
During cross-examination, Ennah said bales of mutilated high denomination notes, such as N1,000 and N500, were mixed with N100 notes.
The witness said when the CBN thought it had disposed of N10 billion, a far lesser amount was actually destroyed, meaning the mutilated bills for destruction remained in circulation.
He averred that a box containing N10 million mutilated bills was found to contain newspaper cuttings.
Michael Lana, the layer to Ayodele Adeyemi, noted that from Ennah’s statement, the close circuit television (CCTV) camera at the treasury room was not working at time.
The lawyer said Ennah should be worried that he was not told.
He asked the witness if he was not surprised that a controller at a CBN department asked them to contribute money to make up for the missing amounts when one of the fraud was discovered.
Leader of prosecution defence, Tayo Olukotun, noted that the defence lawyer’s cross-examination of the witnesses was ambiguous because it went outside the statement Ennah made, which was admitted by the court as exhibit.