A prosecution witness, Abdulraheem Jimoh, in the ongoing trial of Erastus Akingbola, a former Managing Director of the defunct Intercontinental Bank Plc, on Wednesday, March 13, 2019, told Justice Mojisola Olatoregun of the Federal High Court sitting in Ikoyi, how the defendant diverted funds from the bank and bought some properties in London for the total sums of\u00a0\u00a39.7m
\nThe prosecution had, on Tuesday, March 12, opened the trial of the former bank chief.
\nOne of the counts reads: “That you, Dr. Erastus B.O. Akingbola, whilst being the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Intercontinental Bank Plc, between November 2007 and July 2008, at Lagos within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, caused to be created a misleading appearance of active trading in the shares of Intercontinental Bank Plc on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, by being connected with the utilization of an aggregate sum of\u00a0N179, 385, 000, 000 (One Hundred and Seventy- Nine Billion, Three Hundred and Eighty-five Million Naira)\u00a0of the bank’s funds for the purchase of Intercontinental Bank Plc’s shares.”
\nAt the resumed hearing today, \u00a0Jimoh\u00a0a former Chief Inspector with the defunct Intercontinental Bank, told the court how he unravelled fraudulent transactions by Akingbola.
\nLed in evidence by the prosecution counsel, Rotimi Jacobs, SAN, \u00a0the witness\u00a0\u00a0said:\u00a0\u00a0“I was given a letter by the Management of the bank, which came from Tropics Securities Limited, a company owned by Dr. Erastus Akingbola, his wife and some other shareholders.
\n“The letter was addressed to the Group Managing Director, Dr. Erastus Akingbola and was attentioned to Mr. Olayinka Adebiyi, requesting the payment of N10billion, N1.2billion and N4.3billion to Tropics Securities Limited and other companies.
\n“Investigation report on the issuance of N10billion to Tropics Properties, Tropic Securities Limited and Bankinson Nigeria Limited showed the monies paid and cleared by Access Bank were said to have been used to pay for the “indebtedness to Access Bank”.
\nThe witness said the N10b fraud was discovered by the bank and later forwarded to him for further enquiry.
\nIn his further evidence, he said he discovered, during investigation, that the defendant acquired properties in London with the sums of \u00a38.5m and \u00a31.2m allegedly diverted from the bank.
\nHe added: “This was discovered when the bank received a letter via\u00a0e-mail \u00a0 from Deutsche Bank of London.
\n“Monies were transferred to Soo-Kok Holdings Limited; Tofa General Enterprises; Cinca Nigeria Limited; Harmony Trust and Investment Limited; Stanzus Investment Limited.”
\nCounsel to the defendant, Wole Olanipekun, SAN,\u00a0during cross-examination, confronted the witness\u00a0 with a documented evidence he gave to an Ikeja High Court some years ago, \u00a0where he contradicted himself over his MBA qualification.
\n
\n“I enrolled, but the MBA programme was aborted because I didn’t finish some project works in 2000 from the University of Ilorin”, the witness told the Judge.
\nOlanipekun also told the court that the witness was misleading the court, adding that “The witness is not a witness of truth and, therefore, should not be believed by the court of his testimony.”
\nWhen asked to explain to the court\u00a0the origin of the statement to the court marked exhibit L, he said:\u00a0\u00a0“The statement was written in my office when the EFCC investigators came to interview me.
\n“They gave me\u00a0their letter head.
\n“The statement was typed by someone else in my office.
\n“I sat beside the person who typed the statement, while I dictated the hand- written statement to her.”
\nUnder further cross-examination, he said he never interrogated or met with the defendant.
\nThe witness, however, admitted to have interrogated various Heads of Departments in the bank.
\n“I interrogated various Heads of Departments in Intercontinental Bank because they acted upon the instructions of Akingbola”, the witness said.
\nThe witness also told the court that no loan was granted to the defendant or his companies.
\nJustice Olatoregun adjourned the case to March 14, 2019 for continuation of trial.
\nThe defendant was first arraigned before Justice Mohammed Idris of the same court on a 26- count charge of fraud, granting reckless credit facility, abuse of office and mismanagement of depositors’ funds in 2009.
\nThe case was later transferred to Justice Charles Archibong on October 25, 2010.
\nJustice Archibong, however, struck out the charge for want of diligent prosecution by the prosecution.
\nDissatisfied, the Commission approached the Court of Appeal on February 20, 2015.
\nThe appellate court, in its ruling, overturned the judgment of the trial court.
\nThe defendant subsequently headed for the Supreme Court, where the decision of the Appeal Court ordering him to face the charges preferred against him by the EFCC was affirmed.
\nThe prosecution counsel, Mr. Mabas Mabur, represented the EFCC in the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A prosecution witness, Abdulraheem Jimoh, in the ongoing trial of Erastus Akingbola, a former Managing Director of the defunct Intercontinental Bank Plc, on Wednesday, March 13, 2019, told Justice Mojisola Olatoregun of the Federal High Court sitting in Ikoyi, how the defendant diverted funds from the bank and bought some properties in London for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":16115,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}