A prosecution witness has told the Federal Capital Territory High Court, Abuja how the suspended Accountant-General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris, compromised the Treasury Single Account, (TSA), Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS), Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) to carry out massive fraud against government.
Idris, Godfrey Olusegun Akindele and Mohammed Kudu Usman are currently standing trial in a N109 billion fraud case before Justice A. O. Adeyemi Ajayi.
The second defendant, Akindele, was a staff in the office of the AGF, and Technical Assistant to the first defendant
Spokesman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Wilson Uwujaren in a statement yesterday reported the Chief Investigative Officer of the case and Prosecution Witness One, PW1, Chief Superintendent of the EFCC, CSE Hayatu Sulaiman Ahmed, as telling the court that Idris manipulated key units under his care like the TSA, GIFMIS and IPPIS to siphon public funds as he liked.
The stolen funds, according to the witness, were allegedly diverted into the construction of properties such as Gezawa Exchange Limited, Gezawa Integrated Farms, and Kano City Mall.
Hayatu Ahmed was quoted as saying: “We had cause to invite several individuals who had transactions with the Gezawa Commodity and Exchange Limited and found one Baita Ibrahim Kura of B I Kura Ibrahim, a Bureau de Change (BDC) operator based in Kano.
“We invited him and cautioned him and he voluntarily wrote a statement, claiming he made several payments like N208 million into Gezawa Commodity Market with Jaiz Bank.”
Baita Ibrahim, according to the prosecution witness, admitted to having paid the sum of N866 million to one Architect Mustapha Mukhtar of Marsc Construction Limited for the construction of Gezawa Commodity Market and Exchange Limited.
He said: “My lord, investigation showed that Ibrahim received United States dollars from the first defendant. We also found that agitation from the nine oil producing states, regarding derivation from the excess crude account, was tabled before the Federal Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) and the committee came up with a figure of about $2.2 billion as what was due to the nine oil producing states, and this amount was to be deducted over a 60 months period on a quarterly basis.”
Hayatu Ahmed said N44.7 billion representing 11.5 per cent of the amount was set aside as gratification to some public officials to facilitate payments to the oil-producing states.
His words: “After the determination of this committee, my lord, some companies, Akindele and Co, a company owned by the second defendant, Godfrey Olusegun Akindele, was presented under the guise of consultancy.
Source: thenationonline