The ongoing trial of Abubakar Ali Peters and his company, Nadabo Energy Limited, for an alleged N1.4billion fraud, before Justice Christopher Balogun of the Lagos State High Court sitting in Ikeja, Lagos continued on Wednesday, with the Court admitting, in evidence, more documents tendered by the prosecution to prove the case against the defendants.
Mr Abubakar and his company are being prosecuted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, on a 27-count charge for allegedly using forged documents to obtain N1,465,961,978.24 from the Federal Government as oil subsidy, after allegedly inflating the quantity of Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, purportedly imported and supplied by the company.
They pleaded “not guilty” to the charges when they were arraigned on December 10, 2012.
At Wednesday’s proceedings, Justice Balogun dismissed the objection raised by the defence in November, on the admissibility of the correspondence from two banks to the EFCC during its investigation.
With the documents admitted, the fifth prosecution witness, who is the Executive Chairman of the EFCC, Abdulrasheed Bawa resumed his testimony.
Led in evidence by EFCC’s counsel, Seidu Atteh, Mr Bawa told the Court that after receiving the responses from Enterprise Bank, the EFCC sent a letter of investigation activities to the Petroleum Products Pricing and Regulatory Agency, PPPRA, which the agency responded to.
Upon no objection by their counsel, The documents, including the statements made by the defendants during their interrogation were admitted in evidence as exhibits.
Giving a summary of the EFCC investigation, Mr Bawa said: “The defendant imported into the country 6,505,140 litres of PMS equivalent to 4,850.962MT.
“ Looking at the landing costs, he ought to have been paid N487,560,246.15, but he was paid and collected N1,465,961,978.24 for claiming to have imported 19,488,992 litres of PMS, which shows that he allegedly fraudulently defrauded the Federal Government of Nigeria to the tune of N978,401,732.09.”
The case was adjourned till December 20 and 21, 2021 for continuation of hearing.
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