The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) rebuffed claims
that the 14-count charge against former Minister of Petroleum
Resources Diezani Alison-Madueke, bank executives and NNPC officials
was dropped.
The accused persons were involved in a $153 million conspiration deal
to conceal the said amount in Fidelity Bank.
It was reported that at a resumed hearing of the matter before Justice
Muslim Hassan of a Federal High Court Lagos on November 5, 2019, the
anti-graft agency through its lawyer Rotimi Oyedepo dropped the
corruption charges against most of the accused persons including
Diezani through an amended four-count charge.
However, in a series of tweets on its verified social media handle,
the anti-graft agency explained that it never dropped charges against
the former Minister but split them to allow for a fresh arraignment of
Alison-Madueke.
The tweets read: โThe attention of the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission, EFCC has been drawn to reports currently circulating in
the social media purporting that the Commission had dropped the
criminal charges against a former minister of petroleum resources,
Diezani Alison-Madueke and other persons indicted for money
laundering.
โThe Commission enjoins members of the public to disregard the report
which is false and misleading. At no time did the commission withdraw
the charge, which is still before Justice Muslim Hassan of the Federal
High Court, Lagos.
โThe only development was that the Commission took a prosecutorial
decision to split the initial 14-count charge to enable separate
arraignment of defendants following a spate of adjournments that
prevented arraignment of the defendants more than one year after the
case was listed.
โThe charges were first filed on November 28, 2018. Since then, every
attempt to arraign the defendants had been frustrated by one excuse or
the other.
โIn more than four times that the matter was called for arraignment,
it was either Lanre Adesanya was sick, bedridden in a London Hospital
or Nnamdi Okonkwo was hypertensive and on admission in a hospital or
Stanley Lawson had had a domestic accident and could not appear in
court.
โIt was clear that these recurring excuses were ploys to frustrate the
arraignment. To get around this, the Commission took a deliberate
decision, which was disclosed in open court, to separately prosecute
the defendants in different courts.
โThis explains why the four-count amended charge brought against Dauda
Lawal, a former executive director of First Bank, did not include
other defendants, except the two who are at large( Diezani
Alison-Madueke and Ben Otti).โ
