The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on Thursday decried the difficulty it encountered while trying to serve a court filing on the defence team of former Anambra State Governor Willie Obiano, who is being prosecuted on N4 billion fraud charges at the Federal High Court in Abuja.
A statement by the commission’s spokesperson, Dele Oyewale, said the prosecuting counsel, Sylvanus Tahir, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), reported the issue to the court at Thursday’s hearing.
It said Mr Tahir told the court how his team made futile efforts to serve the former governor’s defence team with a counter-affidavit.
Mr Tahir said the commission’s officers, on Wednesday, fruitlessly knocked on the gate of the chambers of the lead defence counsel, Onyechi Ikpeazu, a SAN, to effect service of the filing as earlier ordered on Monday by the court.
“My Lord, you will recall that on Monday, March 4, 2024, when this matter was mentioned for hearing, the complainant was served with a motion on notice, which was intended to challenge this suit before this honourable court, but the honourable court directed that we should file our response latest yesterday Wednesday, 6 March. And we complied. My people went to the office of the lead senior counsel in this matter to serve the process, but their gate was closed, and they did not attend to us.
“I personally called him, lead counsel, and he responded that he was at the tribunal and I told him that my people were in his office to serve him. I also called another counsel in that chamber to inform him that there were people in his office to serve him and he said he was going to get back to me but he didn’t get back, eventually.
“Since there was nobody to open the gate for us to serve them, it was this morning that we served them and we are ready for the hearing.”
A senior advocate leading the defence team on Thursday, Patrick Ikweto, did not counter the allegation.
He confirmed that the prosecution only served his team its counter-affidavit Thursday morning and prayed to the court for an adjournment to enable his team to respond adequately.
The counter-affidavit filed by EFCC was in response to an application filed by Mr Obiano to challenge the court’s jurisdiction to entertain the charges against him.
His lawyers argued, among others, that the Abuja division of the court was not the proper venue for the trial for offences that had to do with the use of Anambra State funds.
Mr Ikpeazu, the former governor’s lead counsel, had on 4 March, filed the motion.
This made the prosecution ask for time to file its response to it.
The trial judge, Inyang Ekwo, had slated the motion for Thursday.
Mr Ekwo, on Thursday, expressed displeasure at the slow progress of the case and fixed 13 March for the final hearing of Mr Obiano’s motion on jurisdiction.
Charges
Mr Obiano was arraigned on 24 January on nine counts of money laundering to the tune of N4 billion.
The former governor denied all the nine charges.
Mr Obiano, who was governor between March 2014 and March 2022, is said to have allegedly diverted the money from the state’s account dedicated to security funds in his last five years in office.
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He allegedly directed the diversion of the funds from the state’s account between April 2017 and March 2022 and spent the money for purposes unconnected to the security affairs of the state.
The funds, according to the EFCC, were diverted through companies that had no business relationship with the Anambra government, converted to dollars and handed over to the former governor in dollars.
The case, filed by the EFCC, detailed the nine companies allegedly used to divert the funds from the state government’s security vote account.
Each of the nine counts disclosed the amount a company received and the period it received it from the state government’s account.
In count one of the charges, the EFCC alleged that between 16 February and 9 March 2018, an aggregate sum of N223,371,000 was paid from the security vote account into the account of Connought International Services Limited.
The anti-graft agency alleged in count two that between 30 October and 13 November 2018, a total sum of N95 million was paid from the security vote account into the bank account of S.Y. Panda Enterprises.
In Count Three, the EFCC alleged that between 11 April 2017 and 21 June 2019, a total of N416 million was diverted from the security vote account into the account of Zirga Zirga Trading Company Limited.
The former governor, however, pleaded not guilty to all counts when the charge was read to him.
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