A three-man panel of the Court of Appeal, Lagos Division,\u00a0 on Thursday, June 23, 2022,\u00a0 upheld the conviction of a former Managing Director of the defunct Bank PHB Plc, Francis Atuche, as well as the bank\u2019s former Chief Financial Officer, Ugo Anyanwu.<\/p>\n
Atuche and his co-convict, Anyanwu, had approached the appellate court to set aside their conviction by Justice Lateefa Okunnu of the Lagos State High Court sitting in Ikeja, Lagos on June 16, 2021 over a N25.7 billion fraud.<\/p>\n
The panel, comprising Justices Sadiq Umar, Adebukola Banjoko and Kayode Bada, while resolving all the issues in the appeal in favour of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, except the sentencing, also clarified that Atuche’s jail term was 12 years concurrently, rather than 120 years, \u00a0handed down by the lower court, if calculated consecutively.<\/p>\n
Also, \u00a0\u00a0the panel reduced Anyanwu’s jail term from 10 years to eight years and affirmed the discharge and acquittal of Atuche’s wife, Elizabeth.<\/p>\n
In an abridged ruling read by Justice Umar, the three-man panel upheld the EFCC’s arguments and unanimously dismissed the appeal.<\/p>\n
It would be recalled\u00a0 that,\u00a0 in 2021, Justice Okunnu, while sentencing Atuche and Anyanwu, had upheld the arguments of the prosecution counsel, Kemi Pinheiro, SAN. \u00a0\u00a0About three years after their arraignment by the EFCC in 2011, they had approached the Court of Appeal, to challenge their trial by the lower court for lack of jurisdiction. But in a judgment delivered in September 2016, the court ordered Justice Okunnu to hands-off the trial, but did not quash the numbers of counts against the defendants. Consequently, the EFCC \u00a0approached the Supreme Court to set aside the judgment and order a trial in the matter.<\/p>\n
In its judgment, \u00a0the apex court \u00a0directed that the case be returned to Justice Okunnu for continuation of trial. While the trial lasted,\u00a0 \u00a0Pinheiro opposed Atuche\u2019s contention that the funds in dispute were loaned and not stolen. Delivering judgment, Justice Okunnu had held that \u201cThe first and third defendants did not debunk the evidence of the prosecution that the loans were used to purchase shares. They rather contended that the monies granted as loan could be used for whatever purposes.\u201d The trial court, \u00a0therefore, sentenced Atuche and Anyanwu, but acquitted Atuche\u2019s wife.<\/p>\n
\u25aa\ufe0eBy Wilson Uwujaren<\/strong>,, Head, Media & Publicity, EFCC<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A three-man panel of the Court of Appeal, Lagos Division,\u00a0 on Thursday, June 23, 2022,\u00a0 upheld the conviction of a former Managing Director of the defunct Bank PHB Plc, Francis Atuche, as well as the bank\u2019s former Chief Financial Officer, Ugo Anyanwu. Atuche and his co-convict, Anyanwu, had approached the appellate court to set aside […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":39580,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5786],"tags":[222,1962,164],"class_list":["post-58448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-statement","tag-appeal","tag-atuche","tag-efcc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58448","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=58448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58448\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}