On Wednesday January 25, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) presented its first witness against former national security adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki who is being tried on a 19 count charges bordering on money laundering of alleged missing N32 billion before an Abuja High Court.
According to Vanguard, the witness, Mr Adariku Michael, who is a lead investigative officer at the EFCC, narrated before trial judge, Justice Hussein Baba-Yusuf, how his team traced N750 million the defendant allegedly transferred into a bank account belonging to Reliance Referral Hospital.
EFCC alleged that Dasuki connived with a former director of finance in the office of the NSA, Mr. Shuaibu Salisu and a former executive director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) Aminu Baba-Kusa, to divert funds.
The witness said that the commission launched its investigations based on a petition dated September 22, 2015, accusing Dasuki of abusing his office and money laundering.
He said: “When we received the petition, we moved into action immediately the same day. We wrote a letter to confirm the allegation regarding the movement of funds from accounts of ONSA to various companies.
“On September 22, 2015, we received a response from the CBN and analysed same. Our analysis showed movement of funds to various companies some of which includes Acacia Holdings Ltd.
“Our findings showed that Acacia has two accounts, one in UBA and another with Ecobank. We found out that Acacia account with UBA received the sum of N600m from ONSA account in CBN, while the second account with Ecobank got N650m.
“We also wrote to UBA, Ecobank and First Bank in respect of Acacia Holdings Ltd and Reliance Referral Hospital.”
The witness said the EFCC also wrote to the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) to get the status of those companies, adding that responses were received and equally analysed.
Meanwhile, the trial of the former governor of Adamawa state Murtala Nyako was on Wednesday, January 23, stalled at the Federal High Court in Abuja due to the absence of the prosecution witness.
At the resumed trial, the absence of Olabode Fayinola, an Economic and Financial Crimes Commission’s witness prevent the hearing on the admissibility of documents tendered by the prosecution.
The counsel to the EFCC, Leke Atolagbe, told the court that the witness, a staff of Zenith Bank Plc was on casual leave and would be resuming on February 13.
