The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC has named the wife of suspended Director General of the National Intelligence Agency, NIA, Amb. Ayo Oke, Folashade as the owner of Flat 7B, No. 13, Osborne Road, Osborne Towers, Ikoyi, Lagos, where the sums of $43,449,947, £27,800 and N23, 218,000 were recently recovered by the EFCC.
This EFCC revealed this on Friday when it tendered the receipt issued by Fine and Country Limited to Chobe Ventures Limited as an exhibit before the Federal High Court in Lagos, where the anti-graft agency is seeking an order of final forfeiture of the recovered money to the Government of Nigeria.
Recall that NIA, an agency where her husband is boss, had claimed ownership of the money.
The EFCC also disclosed that Mrs. Oke made the cash payment in tranches of $700,000, $650,000 and $353,700 to a Bureau de Change company, Sulah Petroleum and Gas Limited, which later converted the sums into N360,000,000 and then paid it to Fine and Country Limited for the purchase of the property.
“The circumstances leading to the discovery of the huge sums stockpiled in Flat 7B, Osborne Towers leaves no one in doubt that the act was pursuant to an unlawful activity.
“The very act of making cash payment of $1.6m without going through any financial institution by Mrs. Folashade Oke for the acquisition of Flat 7B, Osborne Towers, is a criminal act punishable by the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Amendment Act. I refer My Lord to sections 1(a), 16(d) and 16(2)(b) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Amendment Act,” a counsel for the EFCC, Mr. Rotimi Oyedepo, told the court on Friday.”
A Detective Inspector with the EFCC, Mohammed Chiroma, in an affidavit, stated that “Chobe Ventures Limited is a bogus company that is not into any business but was merely incorporated to retain proceeds of suspected unlawful activities of Mrs. Folashade Oke.”
The EFFC asked the presiding judge, Justice Muslim Hassan, to order the permanent forfeiture of the funds to the Federal Government – with Oyedepo arguing that the fact that Flat 7B, Osborne Towers was purchased in a criminal manner, made the N13bn recovered therein “extremely suspicious to be proceeds of unlawful acts.”
He told the court that despite a newspaper advertisement of the first court order of April 13, 2017 temporarily forfeiting the money to the Federal Government, no one showed up in court on Friday to show cause why the money should not be permanently forfeited to the Federal Government.
This is more trouble for the suspended DG of NIA, Mr. Oke. With this, his latest worry is no longer to get reinstated but now how he and his wife could avoid possible prosecution for corruption and money-laundering.
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