Court order
A Federal High Court in Abuja has ordered an interim forfeiture of 46 properties that has been linked to Mrs. Ngozi Olejeme, the former Chairperson of the Board of The Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF).
The Justice made the ruling on a motion ex-parte, titled: FHC/ABJ/CS/538/2020, argued by Ekele Iheanacho, a lawyer with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on Tuesday, June 31.
Following that court order, the EFCC is to publish the order in a national daily to enable anyone who is interested in the said property to show cause and give reasons why the Federal government should not permanently confiscate the property.
July 27, 2020 has been fixed as the return date.
According the EFCC the properties were purchased with the public funds that Ngozi Olejeme embezzled during her time (2009-2015) in the NSITF the property are in the FCT, Delta and Bayelsa states.
One if the said property is a building at No. 2 Kainji Crescent, Maitama, Abuja which she bought for N1. 3billion in 2012.
It is alleged that Mrs. Ngozi used a third party to acquire funds from kickback contracts, which is what she used to get her ill-gotten property.
The court order stated that Ngozi collected money from her First Bank Plc account officer (Chuka Eze), NSITF Dir. Of Corporate Affairs (Aliyu Zubairu), Director of Finance NSITF (Sambo Ekhasomi), Abubakar Umar and Aderibigbe Adebayo. The amount summing up to $48,485,127.00
“Mrs. Olejeme procured the services of bureau de change operators through Mr. Chuka, who provided the bank accounts of the BDC operators to her.
According to the EFCC,
“The personal account of Mrs. Olejeme in First Bank Plc also received a total in-flow of N22, 200,000.00 from Hybrid Investment Advisors Ltd, a contractor to NSITF.
A firm engaged by the NSITF, Excellent Solicitors & Consultants, was said to have received over N1 billion from the NSITF for consulting but all this was false as the proprietor, Ozoaka Max withdrew the money and distributed it to proxies of Mrs. Olejeme.
“Within the same period, the sum of N5, 984,059,110 was paid by NSITF under the guise of consultancy services to Fountain Legal Services and Fountain Media Consults being the firms owned by Adebayo Adebowale Aderibigbe (a staff of NSITF).
“As the said payments were made by the NSITF to his firms’ accounts, Mr. Adebayo Adebowale Aderibigbe gave Mrs. Olejeme a total cash sum of N505,000,000.00 and US$11,488,550.00 in dollars.
The EFCC statement pointed that most of the funds embezzled by Mrs. Ngozi Olejeme were by third parties and did not make up part of her lawful income.
“Mrs. Olejeme hired the services of one Mr. Ifeanyi Njokanma, who is a property manager to purchase and acquire, on her behalf, most of the property,” the EFCC said.
The entire web of embezzlement included a host of names, companies and accounts.