EFCC Opens Case against Fayose’s Aide
The prosecution yesterday opened its case in the trial of Abiodun Agbele, an aide to Ekiti State Governor Ayodele Fayose, with the testimony of its first witness Mr. Sunday Oluseye Alade.
Alade, a 54 year old bank official told the court how he, along with some other officials of a bank and others received N1,219,490,000 cash brought into Akure airport on 17,06/2014 by ex-Minister of State for Defence, Musiliu Obanikoro and two others.
The witness, who works in the Akure branch of the bank, gave details of how two aircraft brought the cash on two occasions, same day and how they moved the cash in a bullion van.
Agbele was arraigned before Justice Nnamdi Dimgba of the Federal High Court, Abuja on August 3, 2016 on an 11-count charge of money laundering involving about N4,685,723,000,000 allegedly taken by former National Security Adviser (NSA) from the account of the office of the NSA domicile in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
The prosecution alleged that the accused knew the N4,685,723,000,000 formed part of the proceeds of alleged unlawful activities by Dasuki.
It is part of the prosecution’s case that on June 17, 2014, Agbele, Obanikoro and other suspects (said to be at large), took N1,219,000,000 from the total N4,685,723,000,000, when they “reasonably ought to have known” that the money was part of proceeds of Dasuki’s unlawful activity.”
Alade, who was led in evidence yesterday by prosecution lawyer, Wahab Shittu, also gave details of how Agbele allegedly supervised the lodgment of the cash into different accounts including those allegedly belonging to Fayose, his company, Spotless Investment, among others.
The prosecution also tendered some statements made by the witness on June 2, 2016 and July 4, 2016.
Part of the statement of June 2, 2016 reads: “Sometime in the month of June 2014, I was informed by my colleague in Ibadan - Lawrence Akande, that a customer of the bank will be bringing cash for lodgment in their account, but since the cash involved may be what he cannot singlehandedly handle and conveniently/safely bring to the branch office, I should arrange for the bank’s bullion van to evacuate the cash from Akure airport.
“To this end, that one Abiodun Agbele had collected my number from him and will call me in respect of the lodgment. Later on that date, One Mr. Abiodun Agbele called that we should arrange to pick some cash from the Akure airport.
“He then came to meet us in the branch with Toyota Hillux van with some security ‘Army’ personnel. We then drove to the airport. At Akure airport, we waited for sometime before the arrival of a medium sized aircraft.
“After the aircraft had parked, three individuals came down and Mr. Abiodun Agbele walked to meet them.
“They had a brief discussion and two of the three men walked away and entered a waiting Toyota Hillux, one of the two appeared to be Senator Musiliu Obanikoro.
“The remaining individual, together with Abiodun Agbele then invited my team to come to the tarmac with the bullion van. And we off-loaded the cash to the bullion van.
“We then drove to the bank in the town in a convoy with their security team made up of soldiers and Mopol officers. At the branch, we just bundle counted the cash and ascertained it was N724,500,000.”