Justice Nnamdi
Dimgba of the Federal High Court sitting in Maitama, Abuja has
adjourned to July 7, 2017 the trial of a cousin to
former President Goodluck Jonathan, Azibaola Robert; his wife, Stella and their company,
One Plus Holdings, after a stunning revelation by the tenth prosecution
witness, David Nkpe, on how One Plus shared to various companies the sum of
$40million received from the Office of the National Security Adviser, ONSA.
Azibaola and his co-accused allegedly diverted $40million (Forty Million
United State Dollars) purportedly meant for supply of Tactical Communication
kits for Special Forces which was transferred from the account of the ONSA with
the Central Bank of Nigeria to the domiciliary account of their company, One
Plus Holdings.
At the resumed
sitting today, Nkpe told the court that, analysis of documents relating to ‘One
Plus Holdings Nigeria Ltd’, showed that the company received the sum of $40million
from ONSA.
According to him, investigation was extended to ONSA to ascertain the purpose
for which the payment was made.
“EFCC wrote to ONSA to
avail them with documents regarding the payment mandate and the reply came”,
Nkpe said.
According to him, the
payment for that particular mandate was for the "Supply of Tactical
Communication Kits for Special Forces".
He went on: “We
investigated the utilisation of the funds and discovered that the funds were
transferred to other companies including Bureau de Change and some of the funds
transferred offshore to countries like London and United Arab Emirates”.
Asked if he could recall
some of the beneficiaries, Nkpe said that, “there were several of them, but I
remember that $6.6mmillion was transferred to a company called ‘Karahyna’
between October 2014 and April 2015, which was specifically done in eight
tranches. I also recall that the sum of $1.5million was transferred to ‘Reya
Telecommunication’ which is a company under One Plus Holdings group.
He added that, “Another sum
of $1.493million was transferred to ‘Kakatar El Ltd’ which is also a company
under One Plus Holdings; a sum of $2million was transferred to ‘Capitafield
Investment Ltd’ and another $330,000 transferred to a company called ‘Teledom’.”
The
PW10 told the court that investigation
did not find any tactical communication kits procured from that fund. “Most
of the companies that received the money did not supply any goods”, he said.
The witness said that, the
analysis carried out on the account of the third defendant (One Plus Holdings)
on September 9, 2014 showed that the $40m was the only major inflow into the
account and from the time of that receipt, all the transactions in the account
were outflows, which is the distribution of the said $40m.
He said the credit balance
in the account before the transaction was $17,277.50.
Thereafter, documents
were presented and admitted as exhibits including: petition from the ONSA to
EFCC as exhibit ASO 16 (1&2), Search warrant dated March 23, 2016; two
power of attorney as exhibit ASO 18a &18b; Deed of Assignment as exhibit
ASO 19a, 19b, 19c; transfer mandate from One Plus Holdings to Zenith Bank as
ASO 20 (1-39); the two statement of the first defendant dated March 23 &
24, 2016 marked as exhibit ASO 21a & ASO 21b
Justice Dimgba,
thereafter, adjourned for cross-examination of the prosecution
witness.
No comments:
Post a Comment