Policeman implicates EFCC official in alleged fraud

Posted by admin EFCC Politics, Nigerian Police Tuesday, June 7th, 2011

A policeman, Chris Attah, on Tuesday, said before a Lagos High Court sitting in Ikeja, that an officer of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Davis Ibrahim, allegedly defrauded a woman, Mrs Augusta Eleshin, of N55,000.

Attah made this assertion while testifying at the resumed trial of Ibrahim and an alleged accomplice, Somorin Olusegun, before Justice Olubunmi Oyewole.

Ibrahim, an administrative officer with the EFCC and Somorin, a GSM repairer, were facing a seven-count charge bordering on conspiracy, to obtain money by false pretence, forgery and tendering of false document.

While being led in evidence by the EFCC prosecutor, Mr Ben Ubi, Attah claimed that the two accused demanded N5 million from Eleshin to compromise a purported investigation of her husband, adding that Eleshin, who is a police inspector, had informed him in August 2008 of the petition allegedly given to her by Ibrahim, posing as one Sadiq Bello.

“In the petition which was made on the letterhead of the EFCC, they claimed that they were investigating her husband, Saka Odofin and that she should pay them N5 million to stop the investigation.

“I told her that the petition, dated August 12, 2008, must be a fake, because it had no minutes but that she should play along with them,” Ubi said.

He also informed the court that he later met with the two accused, posing as an elder brother to the man who was being investigated and he was also shown another copy of the purported petition.

He added further that Ibrahim drove them to the EFCC office in Lagos at a weekend, to buttress the authenticity of their claims.

“I told him we cannot pay the N5 million they were demanding and asked Eleshin to give them N55,000 which she had on her,” he explained.

Attah said while he was away in Osun State a few days later, Eleshin called him, complaining that the accused were still demanding for more money.

This, he said, prompted him to call his contacts at the EFCC office in Lagos, who later arrested them after Eleshin made a written petition against Ibrahim.

Ibrahim’s counsel, Mr E.D. Onyeke during the cross-examination disputed Attah’s testimony arguing that it does not corrolate with the account made earlier before the court by Eleshin.

Onyeke said he failed to arrest the alleged culprits even when it was his duty as a police officer to do so and he also failed to report the alleged incident but instead went to Osogbo and urged the court to dismiss the testimony claiming that Attah was a “fabricated witness”.

Oyewole adjourned the matter to June 13, 2011 to enable the prosecution call more witnesses.

-Tribunewp_posts