The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on Thursday arraigned three bank staff, two civil servants and two companies before Justice Patrick Afen of the FCT High Court, Abuja on a three-count charge of fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, forgery of public sector accounts and obtaining under false pretence N25.4 million.
The accused persons, who allegedly defrauded Mrs. Juliet Uzor, are Napoleon Obaje Adofu, Branch Manager, Oceanic Bank, Karu; Augustine Odinawor, Branch Manager, Fidelity Bank Gwagwalada; Patrick Onyekachi, staff of Equatorial Trust Bank, Abuja; Reuben Omotayo, Staff of the Federal Capital Development Authority; and Abdulmalik Isa Teina, staff of Abuja Geographic Information System.
They were arraigned alongside two companies: Yombor Ventures Limited and Aicoor Tao Nigeria Limited.
The accused persons pleaded not guilty on all counts.
Defence counsel, Oluwafemi Adetusi, asked the court to grant his clients bail.
He asked the court to take into consideration the constitutional right of the accused persons based on the fact that they are still presumed innocent until proven guilty.
He said: “My Lord, with this application, we are relying on the provisions of Section 35 (1) and Section 36 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
“And also, we base it on the jurisdiction of this court.
“We urge the court to grant our prayers by granting the accused persons bail.
“We also pray that the conditions will be on the most liberal term.”
However, Salisu Majidadi, counsel to EFCC, told the court that he was only handed the bail application by the counsel to the second accused person in court and would need time to respond to the application.
Afen told the defence counsel that he cannot consider oral bail applications for the accused persons.
In respect to the second accused person, who had filed a formal application, Afen said the prosecution by law has a 48-hour window to respond to it.
After listening to arguments on both sides, the judge ruled that applications for bail must be formal and will be ruled upon on May 17.
The judge therefore directed that the accused persons be remanded in Kuje prison.
Trouble began for the bankers when a N25,460,000.00 bank draft payable to Abuja Geographic Information Systems was handed to them and instead of paying the draft into the proper account, they allegedly conspired with their friends, who are bankers, to open a fake AGIS corporate account and pay the draft into it.
After the draft cleared, the accused persons then transferred the amount electronically to two company accounts from which they withdrew and shared the funds.