REPRIEVE yesterday came the way of embattled oil magnate Ifeanyi Ubah as a Federal High Court in Lagos voided the police reports on which basis he was to be prosecuted for alleged complicity in the petroleum subsidy fraud.
Justice Chukwujekwu Aneke, held that the two interim reports generated by the police Special Fraud Unit (SFU), Ikoyi, Lagos and on which the police had planned to prosecute Ubah and his company, Capital Oil, were not products of fair and unbiased investigation.
Justice Aneke held that both reports were invalid and that the applicants (Ubah and his company) cannot be prosecuted on the basis of the interim reports.
The judge also nullified the complaint made by the Presidential Committee on Verification of Oil Subsidy Payment to oil marketers, on the ground that it was tainted by malice.
Justice Aneke made an order of perpetual injunction, restraining the IGP and Commissioner of Police, SFU from harassing, arresting or instituting any criminal process against him and his company on the basis of the voided reports.
He awarded N10 million damages agsinst the respondents, in favour of the applicants.
The judge held that from the totality of evidence before his court, it was clear that the rights of the applicants were infracted by the respondents in the suit, particularly the police , who detained him for about 10 days late last year.
Justice Aneke claimed that the police, in arguing that they could not be restrained from performing their statutory responsibilities, were under the illusion that once they are carrying out their statutory responsibilities, they can do no wrong, even when such acts fly in the face of the law.
The judge held that the court has the jurisdiction to restrain public officers from executing their statutory functions if their powers were being exercised against the provisions of the law.
Ubah and his company had filed the suit – a fundamental rights enforcement application –against the IGP, the CP, SFU, Ayotunde Ogunsakin, Managing Director, Access Bank, Aigboje Aig-Imokhuede and Managing Director, Coscharis Motors, Cosmos Maduka, alleging, among others, rights violation.
Ubah had averred in his statement accompanying his application, that the interim report dated November 2, 2012 in which the second respondent (Ogunsakin) had purported that he would be arraigned on a prima facie case of money laundering and criminal conspiracy, was a prosecutorial misconduct.
He averred that another report dated November 3, 2012 in which the police had stated that the report would be submitted in a case of stealing and economic sabotage, amounted to a breach of the applicant’s fundamental right.
He also challenged his detention by the police for about 10 days, allegedly on the prodding of Maduka and his company.
Ubah had stated that his problem arose from a dispute between him, Maduka and Access bank over a $164million loan Maduka allegedly facilitated from the bank and which they (himself and Maduka) invested in petroleum importation.
He averred that the complaint by the presidential committee and the two police reports were allegedly influenced by Aig-Imokhuede (the committee’s Chairman and Access Bank MD) and Maduka (A director in the bank) whose biddings Ogunsakin (also a member of the committee) allegedly carried out.
Justice Aneke agreed with the applicants that since Access Banks’ MD and Ogunsakin were members of the presidential committee, the product of their investigation, as it relates to the applicants’ case could not be said to be free from bias.
Earlier in the judgment, the judge dismissed four separate preliminary objections raised against the suit by the respondents on the ground that they lacked merit.
On the argument by the police that the suit was an abuse of court process, because a similar suit had been decided by another judge of the court, Justice Aneke held that the suits were different because parties and reliefs sought were not the same.
The judge also criticised argument by the respondents that Capital Oil, not being a natural person cannot come under the fundamental rights procedure to seek the protection of its rights. The judge held that by the wording of the preamble to the Fundamental Rights Enforcement Rules 2009 (Article 3 (e) of the Rules) a non animate party can approach the court to have its rights protected.
