The Nation Newspaper

Tag: fresh probe

  • $2.6b London-Paris Club cash: Governors face fresh probe

    The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is considering the probe of some state governors for allegedly diverting fees meant for payment to consultants who assisted states on the London-Paris Club loan refund.

    Some states may not be able to access the last tranche of refund of about $2,689,279,365 unless they allow the federal government to deduct the consultants’ fees at source.

    The consultants are insisting on the payment of their $350million before the $2.6billion is released to states.

    Investigation by our correspondent revealed that while the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) offered to pay its consultants about two per cent for services, most states promised their consultants between five to 10 per cent.

    The NGF had hired Biz Plus Limited and GSL Consulting Limited as its consultants

    Some governors that did not hire consultants are now alleged to have collected consultancy fess between five and 10 percent for themselves.

    President Muhammadu Buhari had approved the release of N522.74 billion (first tranche) refund to states pending reconciliation of records following protests by states against over deductions for external debt service between 1995 and 2002.

    Each state was entitled to N14.5 billion or 25% of the amount claimed.

    The second tranche of N243.79billion was released in December 2017.

    The release of the cash was trailed by a huge controversy, including payment of N19billion consultancy fees and $86million into the accounts of the NGF.

    The EFCC in the last two and a half years had been investigating the alleged diversion of the N19billion under the guise of consultancy fees.

    About $183,000 out of the N3.5billion was transferred to a jewellery firm in Dubai bring patronized by some ranking Senators.

    About four suspects are already facing trial for alleged conversion of N3.5billion out of N19billion London-Paris Club refund to states.

    But investigation revealed that many governors and past governors are in trouble over the refund.

    Findings revealed that most governors have not paid the consultants they engaged to trace their loan records, repayment and their states’ share of refund.

    A reliable source, who spoke in confidence, said: “We are still investigating the London-Paris Club refund because there had been issues on the cash. Some governors have diverted the refund and deducted consultancy fees without paying consultants.

    “Most governors have reneged on the agreement to pay the consultants engaged by their states.

    “While the NGF offered to pay consultants about two per cent, some states negotiated five to 10% with their consultants. Yet these governors have deducted the consultancy fees from the refunds made to their states without paying the consultants.

    “There is a case of state which got over N11billion. The governor of the affected state violated the agreement and paid only a pittance of N15million to the consultants.

    “Some state governors did not engage consultants but they paid consultancy fees to themselves through their cronies.

    “So far, about $350million is the accumulated consultancy fees. Despite the approval by the presidency NGF does not want $350million released to consultants at all.”

    The source said: “One of the governors who diverted N500million out of the London-Paris Club refund was uncovered and he has lost the cash to the Federal Government.

    “We have more instances. Some former governors, who had nothing to do with the refund, brought in consultants in order to benefit from the exercise.”

    A government source said: “The position of the presidency is that the $350million out of about $2,689,279,365 final tranche of London-Paris Club refund should be paid to the consultants.

    “In fact the presidency directed that the consultancy fees should be deducted and remitted into a dedicated in CBN.

    “The governors are opposed to deduction from source. They said since the cash belongs to states, the presidency should leave governors to relate with their consultants. They also claimed that the presidency was never part of any agreement between states and consultants.”

     

  • Patience Jonathan faces fresh probe over N5b Abuja hotel

    Patience Jonathan faces fresh probe over N5b Abuja hotel

    EFCC sends team to Port Harcourt, Yenagoa over four other choice assets linked to ex-First Lady
    •May forfeit alleged properties to Federal Government
    •Four accounts containing $19m to remain frozen
    •Commission insists Mrs. Jonathan must explain source of fund

    Former First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan appears to have more explanation to make to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) besides the $19 million just frozen in her accounts.

    Mrs. Jonathan has just been linked with five choice properties including a N5billion hotel in Abuja, The Nation gathered yesterday.

    The EFCC is currently studying documents on how the Abuja hotel (names withheld) was built.

    It has also dispatched a team of investigators to Yenagoa, Bayelsa State and Port Harcourt, Rivers State for the purpose of establishing the ownership of four properties in the two cities.

    The anti-graft agency is likely to confiscate the five properties once it is able to confirm that they belong to Mrs. Jonathan.

    One of the pieces of evidence the EFCC has in its possession in its probe of the ex-First Lady is her cumulative pay and perks as a civil servant in Bayelsa State where she rose to the post of Permanent Secretary.

    Sources said the pay details are far below the $31million which the ex-First Lady claimed as her legitimately earned money.

    The EFCC is insisting that Mrs. Jonathan must account for how she came about the cash wired into the five accounts to which she is a signatory or forfeit it to the Federal Government.

    One of the sources familiar with the probe said the money used in acquiring the properties under investigation appears to be gratification to Mrs. Jonathan when her husband was in power.

    The source said: “Based on intelligence report, we have isolated five properties allegedly identified with the ex-First Lady. These properties include a N5billion hotel in Abuja and four others in Yenagoa and Port Harcourt.

    “A special team has gone to verify all these assets in the affected areas including the contractors engaged, the mode of payment to them, relevant land registration documents, and associates used as fronts.

    “In the next few days, we will start questioning all those involved in the acquisition or building of the assets. We are lucky that this investigation has a lot of e-transaction and computerization components. There is no hiding place for anyone involved.

    “If at the end of the day the five assets belong to the ex-First Lady, we will approach the court to place all these assets under Interim Assets Forfeiture in line with Sections 28 and 34 of the EFCC (Establishment Act) 2004 and Section 13(1) of the Federal High Court Act, 2004.”

    Section 28 of the EFCC Act stipulates that: “Where a person is arrested for an offence under this Act, the Commission shall immediately trace and attach all the assets and properties of the person acquired as a result of such economic or financial crime and shall thereafter cause to be obtained an interim attachment order from the Court.”

    Section 13 of the Federal High Court Act reads in part: “The Court may grant an injunction or appoint a receiver by an interlocutory order in all cases in which it appears to the Court to be just or convenient so to do.

    “Any such order may be made either unconditionally or on such terms and conditions as the Court thinks just.”

    Responding to a question, the source said: “If our investigation reveals that the assets are not owned by Mrs. Patience Jonathan, we will return them to their legitimate owners.”

    The Nation also gathered that the EFCC is not about to defreeze Mrs. Jonathan’s accounts under investigation.

    “We have retrieved documents on the pay package and monetized perks of Mrs. Patience Jonathan when she was a Permanent Secretary in the government of Bayelsa State. Her total emoluments do not tally with the funds remitted into the five accounts,” an EFCC source said.

    “She owes us a duty to explain how she came about these funds. Our investigation showed that the funds came from gratifications; it is left to her to prove otherwise.

    “The good thing is that the ex-First Lady was the one who sued EFCC demanding the release of her $31million. She has a duty as a former public officer to explain how she earned the funds. Did she declare these funds in her Assets Declaration Form as a Permanent Secretary?

    “We are happy that the case is in court and the onus is on her to prove ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ that she is the owner of the funds. If we had initiated the action, some people by now will be accusing EFCC of witch-hunt.

    “But she went to court to exercise her rights under the law. The same law demands that you must seek equity with clean hands. I think the press should take more than a passing interest in what is going on in the court.”

    The anti-graft agency claimed last week that it has established a prima facie case of money laundering against the ex-First Lady and 10 others.

    The 11 suspects may face trial for money laundering if the recommendation of the investigative team is upheld.

    The EFCC declared that “preliminary investigation has also indicted Mrs. Patience Jonathan.”

    The other 10 suspects indicted by the investigative team are a former Senior Special Assistant ( Domestic / Household and Social Events to the former President), Dr. Dudafa Waripamo-Owei Emmanuel; Damola Bolodeoku; Dipo Oshodi; Theodora Varinik; Pluto Property and Investment Company Limited; Seagate Property Development and Investment Limited; Globus Integrated Services Limited; Trans Ocean Property and Investment Company Limited and Skye Bank Plc. The report said in part: “Based on the investigation so far carried out, it has revealed that the four fraudulent VISA Platinum USD Card accounts used by Mrs. Patience Goodluck Jonathan  has a cumulative balance of $14,029.881.79 which has been swept Post No Debit Card category.

    “Again, her personal account, different from the four fraudulent VISA Platinum USD Card accounts, bears the balance of $5,841,426.17.

    “Considering the above stated findings, we can safely conclude that a prima facie case of conspiracy to retain proceeds of unlawful activities, retention of the proceeds of unlawful activities, money laundering contrary to Section 15(3) and 18(a) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) (Amendment) Act, 2012 and forgery contrary to Section 1(2) (c) of the Miscellaneous Offences Act,  Cap M17, Laws of the Federation, 2004 have been established against the aforementioned suspects.”

    Also, Mrs. Jonathan has admitted that she is the owner and signatory to the five accounts in which the Economic and Financial Crimes (EFCC) found over $22.3million.

    She said she has never received any monies from any unknown sources paid into the five accounts.

    But she was silent on the sources of the cash wired into the affected accounts.

    She however explained that the accounts were opened to facilitate her travel overseas particularly for medical treatment, sundry purchase for herself and her late mother Mrs. Charity Oba (Mama Sisi).

    She indicted Wampemo-Owei Dudafa who was the Special Adviser on Domestic Affairs to the former President Dr. Jonathan, and Skye Bank officials for registering phony companies for four of the five accounts.

    A statement by her Media Office said: “Sometime in 2013, following the advice of top officials of the EFCC then in the company of Wampemo-Owei Dudafa who was the Special Adviser on Domestic Affairs to the former President Dr. Jonathan, that she should not travel oversees with cash otherwise she may contravene Money Laundering laws, Mrs. Patience Jonathan agreed to open accounts with Skye Bank Plc and directed Dudafa to see to it.

    “Dudafa came with two bank managers (Officials) of Skye Bank Plc with the account opening forms which she duly signed.

    “These accounts were all dollar based Platinum Visa cards in respect of five accounts.

    “When the bank officials brought the ATM cards for the said accounts of which she is sole signatory, she discovered to her surprise that only one of these accounts bore her personal name while four were in the names of companies not known to her.

    “She immediately complained about this anomaly to Dudafa and the bank officials, Demola Doledeoku and Dipo Oshodi came back to the villa with forms to change and convert the said accounts to the personal name of Mrs. Jonathan.

    “This was her firm request which the bank officials promised to effect immediately and she duly completed account conversion forms and signed the mandate forms as a the sole signatory, but as it would appear, the said bank officials did not change the Account names despite her request.

    “It was in 2014 or thereabout that she was given the ATM cards for all the five accounts with the bank officials promising to exchange the cards for the four reflecting her correct names. This again, the banks officials failed to do despite her repeated request.”

     

  • Chibok abduction: needless fresh probe

    Chibok abduction: needless fresh probe

    Whoever came up with the suggestion that a fresh probe was needed into the abduction of 219 Chibok, Borno State, schoolgirls must be exasperatingly inventive. Since the girls were taken into captivity by Boko Haram insurgents some 21 months ago, the only substantial thing the federal government has done relating directly to the abduction was constituting the Brig.-Gen. Ibrahim Sabo (retd.) panel which carried out a comprehensive probe of the April 14, 2014 abduction. The probe seemed to everyone to have been comprehensively and professionally done. The panel established the number of missing schoolgirls — a number hitherto made the subject of the former president’s wife’s melodramatic jocosity — the circumstances of their abduction, dereliction of duty of the security forces, among other things. No one questioned the panel’s competence, nor the substance of its report.

    Why, some 21 months after, the government has decided to set up another panel to “unravel the remote and immediate circumstances leading to the kidnap of the girls…as well as the other events, actions and inactions that followed…” is a mystery. The decision to probe the abduction all over again was announced when the Bring Back Our Girls Movement went to Aso Villa to seek audience with the president and let him know how frustrated they felt that the girls remained in captivity. Could it be that the Buhari presidency is unclear about a number of issues surrounding the abduction? Surely, the abduction took place, and the number of abducted girls, even if it disputed, is a fairly well established fact. How and why the abduction took place and those to blame are also beyond dispute.

    Given the way the government works, the Buhari government is unlikely to expatiate on its reasons for ordering a fresh probe. But apparently with a new probe panel sitting, the government can give the impression it is actively doing something about the abduction. Already, the president, says his spokesman, Garba Shehu, goes to bed and wakes up every day with the Chibok girls on his mind. The public will have to believe him. But during his maiden media chat, he admitted he had no information about the girls’ whereabouts, nor in what circumstances they were being kept. He struggled to give an idea of what his government was doing beyond rearming the military, reshuffling the high command, and reclaiming virtually all the territories previously occupied by the insurgents. It was probably partly because they got a sense of the government’s inaction that the BBOG Movement sought audience with the president. Perhaps, too, they made him realise just how unhappy they were, to which the president was reported to have bristled over the campaigners’ lack of empathy for the government’s pains and achievements.

    What the BBOG Movement and the rest of the country want is not a fresh probe. What they want is action to free the girls. President Buhari misses the point when he expects the public to pause and begin to appreciate what the government has done so far. He was elected not to adumbrate the steps he had taken or how far he has gone without achieving the objectives; he was elected to rescue the girls, however that is to be done. He must remember that one of the reasons Dr. Jonathan lost the election, and before then the entire world’s goodwill, was because he offered both scepticism over the girls abduction and excuses for his inability to rescue them even when the chance still existed. No one is saying President Buhari must successfully rescue the girls, though if he does, he will become even more popular. What everyone is saying is that the government must be seen to be actively and deeply engaged in rescuing the girls, or die trying. If he needs active intelligence, which he bemoaned during his media chat that he lacked, as president he has been entrusted with all the wherewithal to summon the intelligence agencies to give him one.

    Dr. Jonathan and his wife showed spectacular dereliction of duty, even perversion of presidential responsibilities, in tackling the abduction. No one now is interested in hearing a rehash of what the former president didn’t or couldn’t do, nor of his wife’s meddling and histrionics. President Buhari must quit exhibiting his patrician airs, especially when he is nettled over responsibilities he either underestimates or shirks altogether. Though the president disagrees, he has obviously been less than attentive to the Chibok abduction matter, notwithstanding his fulsome involvement in the war on terror. The BBOG visit must therefore serve as a reminder to him of what it means to be president, something Dr. Jonathan failed to appreciate, and something President Buhari himself appears to be learning to fully comprehend.

     

  • Umar urges fresh probe of Kudirat’s murder

    Umar urges fresh probe of Kudirat’s murder

    A former Military Administrator of Kaduna State, Col. Abubakar Dangiwa Umar yesterday asked the Federal Government to reopen investigation into the death of the nation’s democracy heroine, Mrs. Kudirat Abiola.

    He said there is no doubt that agents of the late Head of State, Gen. Sani Abacha assassinated Kudirat.

    Umar, who made the suggestion in a statement in Abuja against the backdrop of the acquittal of all suspects implicated in the assassination, said the nation’s judicial system has failed to deliver justice to Kudirat.

    He said it was wrong to assume that there was no witness to prove how Kudirat was killed.

    Umar said Sgt. Rogers was a key witness to the murder and he could not understand the logic of his (Rogers’) release.

    The Court of Appeal , Lagos Division last Friday set free the last batch of suspects including Major Hamzat Al-Mustapha and Alhaji Lateef Sofolahan for want of concrete evidence.

    But Umar said the case should not be swept under the carpet because there is a sufficient clue in Rogers.

    “There is absolutely no doubt that agents of the Abacha regime assassinated Kudirat Abiola. As it has turned out, our judicial system has failed to deliver justice to the heroine and her family. This is most regrettable.

    “As believers in God and His attributes which are all encompassing, we are aware that He will deliver His judgment in this matter. All those involved in her murder will get their just reward here and now.

    “The government is duty bound to reopen fresh investigations into this case. Sgt Rogers is a key witness. One cannot understand the logic of his release by the Obasanjo administration other than contempt for the Abiola family.

    “Kudirat died in the service of her unjustly treated husband and therefore in obedience of God’s commands. His promised reward of eternal life in heaven to such an obedient wife is fulfilled as He delivers.

    “As painful as her tragic loss is, her family should take solace in her present fate. She sleeps well in heaven.”