The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Abdulrasheed Bawa, on Wednesday testified before the Lagos State High Court in Ikeja in an alleged N1.4bn subsidy fraud suit against an oil company, Nadabo Energy.
The EFCC had accused Abubakar Peters and his company, Nadabo Energy, of allegedly using forged documents to obtain N1,464,961,978.24 from the Federal Government as an oil subsidy after allegedly inflating the quantity of premium motor spirit purportedly supplied to 14,000M.
Bawa, before he was appointed the EFCC chairman, testified before the court where he identified two documents as email correspondence between him and Ullrich Afini Awani of Global Commodities Africa and the Certificate of Identification.
At the resumed hearing of the trial on Wednesday, Bawa while being led in evidence by the prosecutor, Seidu Atteh, analysed the email correspondence of the defendant stating that the defendants contrary to their claim, took 6m litres of PMS from their mother vessel, MT Evriduk to their chartered vessel, MT St. Vanessa and discharged same quantity at Port-Harcourt.
He said, “In addition, the email also informed us that one Mr Jide Akpan was the agent of the vessel. We invited the said Akpan and during our interrogation with him, he confirmed that the first defendant through the second defendant deferred the vessel and paid for it.”
Bawa added that he wrote a letter of investigation to Petrocam, the trader that supplied the defendant with the petroleum product requesting all the financial and shipping documents in respect of transactions with Nadabo Energy.
The EFCC boss said the antigraft agency also wrote a letter of investigations of activities to the Corporate Affairs Commission to confirm the registration status of Nadabo Energy, adding that the CAC responded in writing by forwarding the Certified True Copies of all the documents requested.
EFCC counsel, Atteh sought to tender all the documents it received from Petrocam and the CAC as evidence but the defence counsel, E.O. Isirameh objected to it on the grounds that the documents were invalid and that they were produced by the prosecutors several years after the subsidy transaction occurred.
Following the argument of the counsel, Justice Christopher Balogun adjourned the case till April 28 for ruling and continuation of the trial.
