By Ikechukwu Nnochiri, ABUJA
The Federal High Court sitting in Abuja, on Wednesday, held that a former Governor of Benue State, Senator Gabriel Suswam, has a case to answer with respect to his alleged complicity in the illegal diversion of public funds totalling about N3.1 billion.
Consequently, the court, in a ruling that was delivered by trial Justice Peter Lifu, fixed September 22 for the former governor and his then Commissioner for Finance, Mr Omodachi Okolobia, to open their defence to an amended 11-count charge the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) preferred against them.
According to the court, the totality of evidence the anti-graft agency adduced before it established a prima facie case that warranted an explanation from the defendants.
It dismissed as lacking in merit a no-case-submission the defendants filed to be discharged and acquitted of the charge against them.
Suswam, who piloted the affairs of Benue State from 2007 to 2015, alongside his co-defendant, had in the application they anchored on sections 302 and 303 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, ACJA, 2015, prayed the court to terminate further proceedings on the case against them.
They contended that the EFCC failed, by way of credible evidence, to link them with allegations it raised in the charge before the court.
Their request was, however, opposed by the prosecution, which insisted that both documentary and oral evidence of witnesses that testified in the matter nailed the defendants to the alleged crime.
Delivering his ruling on Wednesday, Justice Lifu held that he found no merit in the defendants’ applications and accordingly dismissed them.
It will be recalled that the EFCC had, in 2015, charged the erstwhile governor and his former Commissioner of Finance to court following an allegation that they looted proceeds of shares owned by the Benue State government and Benue Investment and Property Company Ltd.
EFCC alleged that the duo laundered about N3.1bn using two companies—Elixir Securities Limited and Elixir Investment Partners Limited—as their conduit pipes.
The defendants were subsequently re-arraigned before the court on November 2, 2020.
In the amended charge, the EFCC, among other things, alleged that the 2nd defendant, Okolobia, transacted a total sum of N578 million in four tranches, in excess of the threshold of cash transactions permitted by the money laundering law.
He was said to have committed the offences between December 2014 and January 2015.
The defendants pleaded not guilty to the charge, even as the court ordered their release on bail, pending the determination of the case.
Source; Vanguard News
