Mr. Adeyemi Ikuforiji, Speaker Lagos House of Assembly |
Embattled Lagos State House of Assembly
Speaker, Mr. Adeyemi Ikuforiji is currently fighting one of the toughest
battles of his life as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on
Thursday told a Federal High Court, Lagos that there were 57 illegal cash
transactions involved in the money laundering charges it preferred against him
and his aide, Mr. Oyebode Atoyebi.
At the commencement of the trial on
Thursday, the first prosecution witness, Mr. Adeniyi Adebayo, who is an
EFCC investigator, said the cash transactions were above the threshold
prescribed by the Money Laundering Act.
Both Ikuforiji and Atoyebi are being
prosecuted by the EFCC for 54 counts of allegedly receiving over N600m from the
Lagos State House of Assembly without passing through a financial institution
between April 2010 and July 2011.
The EFCC said the alleged offence
contravened Section 18 (a) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act 2011.
Adebayo, who was led in evidence by EFCC
counsel, Chief Godwin Obla (SAN), said the anti-graft agency in June 2011
received a petition which “was a complaint of siphoning of public funds against
the first accused person (Ikuforiji).”
The witness, upon being asked by Obla,
told the court, presided over by Justice Ibrahim Buba, that investigation
conducted by his team, revealed that “57 cash transactions” were involved in
the charges.
He said, “We received documents from the
Lagos State House of Assembly – Cash Release Registers. On analysing the
documents, we discovered that various amounts of money were released to the
second accused person (Atoyebi) on behalf of the first accused person
(Ikuforiji).
“On further analysis of these documents,
we also discovered that the cash releases were above the stated threshold in
the Money Laundering Act.”
He said Atoyebi received the cash
payments on all the 57 occasions on behalf of the Speaker.
He said when confronted with the
allegation, the Speaker, Atoyebi and other concerned members and personnel of
the House of Assembly admitted in their various statements to the EFCC that the
cash transactions actually took place.
Upon an instruction from Obla, Atoyebi
read a portion of a statement dated October 28, 2011 credited to
Ikuforiji, who was quoted to have confirmed that Atoyebi “properly delivered”
the money to him.
The matter was adjourned till December
2.
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