A prosecution witness of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) admitted before a Federal High Court in Abuja yesterday that a loan taken by Mohammed Bello Adoke from Unity Bank is also being classified as a bribe by the anti-graft agency in a case before another court.
Adoke, former attorney-general of the federation (AGF), is currently standing trial alongside Aliyu Abubakar, a property developer, over allegations of money laundering amounting to N300 million.
The EFCC alleged that Adoke made a cash payment of $2,267,400 to Unity Bank in 2013 in contravention of money laundering laws.
Adoke, in his memoir, said Abubakar had in 2011 offered him property for N500m out of which Unity Bank provided a mortgage of N300m (about $2.2m then).
The former AGF said when he could not raise the funds to pay his equity contribution of N200 million, Abubakar refunded the N300 million loan to Unity Bank and sold the same property to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in 2013.
But in a criminal conspiracy case against Adoke, Abubakar, and others before a Federal Capital Territory (FCT) high court, the EFCC is arguing that the same N300 million was a bribe received by the former AGF in the OPL 245 transaction of 2011.
Adoke has often maintained that his trial is politically motivated and that he did not collect any bribe as alleged by the EFCC.
Ibrahim Ahmad, a retired chief superintendent of police (CSP), was the officer that investigated the allegations of money laundering when he was with the EFCC.
The prosecutors, led by O. I. Uket of the EFCC, presented Ahmad as the eighth prosecution witness (PW8) before Justice Inyang Ekwo yesterday.
Ahmad had been cross-examined by Kanu Agabi, Adoke’s lead counsel, on Monday but it did not go very well as the witness did not provide direct answers to the lawyer’s questions on the nature of the banking transaction.
Following adjournment yesterday, Paul Erokoro, also in Adoke’s team, took over the cross-examination of Ahmad after Agabi had apologised for “running out of patience” the previous day, according to reports by The Cable.
