The lawyers to former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) spokesman, Mr. Plus a Metuh, have indicated their interest to appeal the seven years sentence he got from a Federal High Court.
\nAnd they did so with comments that seemed to impugn the integrity of the judgment.
\n\u201cThe judge confessed that an issue like this is novel; in other words, he was carrying out an experiment.
\n\u201cFor me, this is a good example of bad judgement, and we have our appeal in our hands, I still have confidence in the law court and we are heading upstairs to the three wise men to know whether he is right or wrong,\u201d Abel Ozioko, Metuh’s lawyer, said.
\nThe lawyer to Metuh’s company Destra Limited, Tochukwu Onwugbufor SAN, was also unsparing of the judgment which he noted was a disappointment.
\nHis words, \u201cWe thought our defence tool would be useful during the judgement but incidentally the consideration was vested in the evidence of the prosecution.
\n\u201cThe judge relied on many evidence of the prosecution to convict the accused, without reference to the evidence of the accused person.
\n\u201cAnd we think on that basis, the judgement is unacceptable to us and we intend to go for appeal,\u201d Mr Onwugbufor said.
\nRecall that the Federal High Court, Abuja, presided over by Justice Okon Abang today, Tuesday, February 25, 2020 gave a seven year jail term sentence to Chief Olisa Metuh, having found him guilty of all the seven-count charges, preferred against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC. He is also to refund the sum of N425million to the Federal Government.
\nAlso convicted is his firm, Destra Investment Limited (2nd defendant), which was liquidated by the court. The seven-count charge upon which Metu was jailed borders on money laundering, criminal conversion and diversion of funds to the tune of N400, 000, 000 (Four Hundred Million Naira).
\nThe convict, who was a former national publicity secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, received the said sum from the Office of the National Security Adviser, ONSA, then headed by Colonel Sambo Dasuki (retired). The prosecution had insisted that the said N400million was diverted to personal use and purchase of property in Banana Island, Lagos.
\nIt could be recalled that the convicts were arraigned on January 2016, and on February 2016, an amended seven-count charge was preferred against them. The prosecution through its counsel Silvernus Tahir, closed its case since November 2016, but the defendants embarked on several delay tactics to frustrate the trial.
\nMetuh was found guilty of count one of the charge which borders on unlawful possession of the aforementioned sum. The court held that “Metuh took possession of the N400million from the Office of the National Security Adviser without contractual agreement”.
\nMetuh and his company were also found guilty of count two of the charge which borders on conversion of the sum by using part of the money to acquire a property in Banana Island.
\nThey were also found guilty of count three and four of the charge which have to do with detention and retention of N400million while count five and six have to do with making cash transfer above the statutory threshold of N5million for individual and N10million for a corporate body. The judge agreed that “the said transaction was in violation of Money Laundering Act as amended in 2012. The prosecution had proven that there was a cash transaction involving the defendant where over $2million was sent to one Nneka Ararume in his residence and the transaction was not by a financial instrument”. The judge also agreed that the origin of the $2million remained undocumented which was to launder the origin of the fund.
\nWhile count seven involved the unlawful transfer of N21.7million to the late Chief Tony Anenni, the court held that the defendant ought to have known that the said amount formed part of unlawful act of the former NSA, and that the prosecution has proved that there was transfer of funds to Chief Tony Anehni for which he was also found guilty and convicted as well.
\nThe judge sentenced Metuh to seven years on count one, two, four and seven; and five years on count three,five and six, totally 43 years. The sentences run concurrently, which leaves Metu to serve only seven years, beginning from the day of conviction.
\nThe court also fined the second defendant, Metu\u2019s Destra investment Limited, the sum of N25million each on counts five and six.\u00a0 While Metu is also to refund the sum of N375million to the Federal Government of Nigeria.
\nThe money in the Diamond Bank account of the second defendant was forfeited to the Federal Government and the company is to be wound up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The lawyers to former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) spokesman, Mr. Plus a Metuh, have indicated their interest to appeal the seven years sentence he got from a Federal High Court. And they did so with comments that seemed to impugn the integrity of the judgment. \u201cThe judge confessed that an issue like this is novel; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":24867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1137,1138,1139],"class_list":["post-24892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-etuh","tag-bad","tag-good"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24892","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=24892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24892\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}