Justice Okon Abang of Federal High Court, Abuja has adjourned the trial of Gabriel Suswam, a former Benue State governor until February 25, 2020.
\nThe Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC is prosecuting Suswam and the Commissioner for Finance in his administration, Omadachi Okolobia on money laundering charges to the tune of N3.1billion. They are alleged to have conspired to launder money, belonging to the state government through the engagement of Abubakar Umar, a bureau de change operator and owner of Fanffash Resources.
\nAt the resumed hearing on February 12, 2020, Umar, the fourth prosecution witness, PW4, under\u00a0cross-examination by Paul Erokoro, SAN, counsel for the second defendant\u00a0was asked if he took the money to the former governor in his Kubwa, Abuja residence.
\nUmar, however, insisted as\u00a0earlier stated in previous hearings that: \u201cI told the\u00a0court that I took the money to Suswam in Maitama and I don’t know any statement of taking money to Suswam’s house in Kubwa.\u201d
\nFurther probing him on his earlier statement, Erokoro, insisted that\u00a0the witness made the statement before Justice\u00a0A.R.\u00a0Mohammed\u00a0of a Federal High Court, Abuja, while he was still presiding over the fraud trial of Suswam and Okolobia.
\nErokoro quoted Umar to have at the previous trial, said: \u201cWhen I saw the alert, I changed the money equivalent to dollars and took it to Suswam\u2019s house in Kubwa\u201d.
\nCounsel for the EFCC, Rotimi Jacobs, SAN, however, raised objections to the line of questioning by Erokoro, insisting that the witness never said what Erokoro claimed he said before Justice Mohammed.
\n\u201cThe entire statement is not the testimony of the witness before Justice Mohammed,\u201d Jacobs argued.
\nErokoro, however, maintained that he was merely quoting the records of the proceedings under Justice Mohammed, arguing further that it could only have been the witness being quoted by the former trial judge. He thus urged the court to \u201callow the question as the\u00a0court is bound by the printed words in the records of proceedings which is presumed to be correct\u201d.
\nJustice Abang,\u00a0thereafter,\u00a0allowed the question\u00a0\u201cin the interest of justice\u201d\u00a0stating that he\u00a0could not\u00a0make findings on issues arising from a document that\u00a0was\u00a0not before the\u00a0court.
\nIn an attempt to further make clarifications, Umar said: \u201cAll I told Justice Mohammed is that I took the money to\u00a0Government\u00a0House in Maitama and not Kubwa.
\n\u201cYes,\u00a0I know\u00a0I\u00a0gave different versions of how I delivered the money, but it wasn’t any of the defendants,\u00a0and nobody told me about Kubwa and I know I took the money to Maitama.\u201d
\nErokoro, afterwards,\u00a0tendered the\u00a0certified\u00a0true\u00a0copies, (CTC)\u00a0of\u00a0the\u00a0records of proceedings before Justice Mohammed, which\u00a0was admitted in evidence.
\nThe case was thereafter,\u00a0adjourned till February 25 and 26, March 24 and 26, 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Justice Okon Abang of Federal High Court, Abuja has adjourned the trial of Gabriel Suswam, a former Benue State governor until February 25, 2020. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC is prosecuting Suswam and the Commissioner for Finance in his administration, Omadachi Okolobia on money laundering charges to the tune of N3.1billion. They are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":24305,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[993,930,994],"class_list":["post-24465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-kubwa","tag-suswam","tag-witness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24465","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=24465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24465\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}