Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Abdulrasheed Bawa, has told a Lagos High Court sitting in Ikeja that the anti-graft agency carried out ‘holistic investigation’ about Abubakar Ali Peters and his company, Nadabo Energy Limited, over allegation of N1.4 billion subsidy fraud. He disclosed this while he was cross-examined before Justice Christopher Balogun in an ongoing trial of the duo.
The EFCC boss, who was the fifth prosecution witness (PW5) informed the court that holistic investigation was done regarding the company activities.
“Through our investigation, we found out that the content of the documents submitted, including a letter written by Masters Energy to the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) that the defendant discharged 14,000MT equivalent to about 19,000,000 litres of PMS in their tank farm is false. From our findings, some documents from the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) were also false,” he said.
The commission is prosecuting Peters and his firm on a 27-count charge bordering on using forged documents to obtain N1,464,961,978.24 from the Federal Government as oil subsidy, after allegedly inflating the quantity of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), purportedly imported and supplied by the company.
When the case was called, Bawa identified Exhibit B as the bundle of documents submitted to the PPPRA for processing the subsidy funds claimed by the defendant.
He also spotted Exhibit W as the bundle of documents furnished the EFCC by the defendant, as he further confirmed that the covering letter seen in Exhibit B was signed by Ted Okonkwo, Head, Port Harcourt Zone of PPPRA, whom he said, “acted, to the best of our knowledge, based on the documents available to him and information received allegedly.”
The trial judge, subsequently, adjourned further hearing to March 1 and 22.
