The Economic
and Financial Crimes Commission on Friday named Mrs. Folashade Oke as the owner
of Flat 7B, No. 13, Osborne Road, Osborne Towers, Ikoyi, Lagos,
where the sums
of $43,449,947, £27,800 and N23, 218,000 were recently recovered by the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
Mrs. Oke is
the wife of the suspended Director General of the National Intelligence Agency,
Amb. Ayo Oke, whose agency had laid claim to the money.
According to
the EFCC, Mrs. Oke made a cash payment of $1.658m for the purchase of the flat
between August 25 and September 3, 2015.
She was said
to have purchased the property in the name of a company, Chobe Ventures
Limited, to which she and her son, Master Ayodele Oke Junior, were directors.
Payment for
the purchase of the flat was said to have been made to one Fine and Country
Limited.
The EFCC
stated that Mrs. Oke made the cash payment in tranches of $700,000, $650,000
and $353,700 to a Bureau de Change company, Sulah Petroleum and Gas Limited,
which later converted the sums into N360,000,000 and subsequently paid it to
Fine and Country Limited for the purchase of the property.
The EFCC on
Friday tendered the receipt issued by Fine and Country Limited to Chobe
Ventures Limited as an exhibit before the Federal High Court in Lagos, where it
is seeking an order of final forfeiture of the recovered money to the Federal
Government.
“The
circumstances leading to the discovery of the huge sums stockpiled in Flat 7B,
Osborne Towers leaves no one in doubt that the act was pursuant to an unlawful
activity.
“The very
act of making cash payment of $1.6m without going through any financial
institution by Mrs. Folashade Oke for the acquisition of Flat 7B, Osborne
Towers, is a criminal act punishable by the Money Laundering (Prohibition)
Amendment Act. I refer My Lord to sections 1(a), 16(d) and 16(2)(b) of the
Money Laundering (Prohibition) Amendment Act,” a counsel for the EFCC, Mr.
Rotimi Oyedepo, told the court on Friday.
In an
affidavit filed before the court, a Detective Inspector with the EFCC, Mohammed
Chiroma, stated that “Chobe Ventures Limited is not into any business but was
merely incorporated to retain proceeds of suspected unlawful activities of Mrs.
Folashade Oke.”
While urging
the presiding judge, Justice Muslim Hassan, to order the permanent forfeiture
of the funds to the Federal Government, Oyedepo argued that the fact that Flat
7B, Osborne Towers was purchased in a criminal manner, made the N13bn recovered
therein “extremely suspicious to be proceeds of unlawful acts.”
The lawyer
noted that despite the newspaper advertisement of the initial order of April
13, 2017 temporarily forfeiting the money to the Federal Government, no one
showed up in court on Friday to show cause why the money should not be
permanently forfeited to the Federal Government.
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