An Abuja Excessive Courtroom has mounted February 26, 2024 for the listening to of a movement filed by the previous Minister of Energy and Metal, Olu Agunloye, difficult the powers of the Financial and Monetary Crimes Fee (EFCC) to prosecute him.
Agunloye has been accused by the corruption bureau of complicity in contract fraud value US$6 billion.
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The EFCC alleged that Agunloye, who was a minister between 1999 and 2003 below the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, illegally awarded a contract for the development of a 3,960-megawatt Mambilla hydropower plant on a construct, function and switch foundation.
The company instructed the courtroom that the contract, which was awarded to Dawn Energy and Transmission Firm Restricted, was made with none budgetary provision, approval or financial assist.
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Agunloye can be mentioned to have corruptly obtained a kickback of N3.6 million from the corporate he awarded the contract to. Nevertheless, the defendant, who had additionally been protection minister, pleaded not responsible to the seven costs in opposition to him.
On the resumption of proceedings within the case yesterday, the 76-year-old defendant, by a movement studying: M/3736/2024, questioned the powers of the EFCC to strive him over the alleged offences. He alleged that the company was disadvantaged of each investigative and prosecutorial powers below the EFCC Act, 2004, to provoke the case in opposition to him.
He additionally alleged that the crimes within the indictment bordered on his actions as a public servant, his alleged disobedience of presidential directives, in addition to the alleged forgery of a letter dated Could 22, 2003.
In keeping with him, these allegations don’t represent monetary crimes, which could be lawfully investigated and prosecuted by the EFCC, in train of its powers below Sections 6, 7 and 46 of the Financial and Monetary Crimes Fee (Institution) Act and in accordance with the choice of the Supreme Courtroom within the case of Nwobike v Federal Republic of Nigeria (2022).
In the meantime, Agunloye has filed one other utility for an order of the courtroom restraining the anti-graft company from inviting, intimidating or harassing his sureties, in addition to an order to range the bail situations the courtroom granted him on January 11 has imposed. who directed his sureties to supply proof of their possession of a property value N300 million.
The defendant instructed the courtroom that the EFCC had “repeatedly harassed, threatened and invited his sureties for investigation,” an motion which, he mentioned, was “carried out in unhealthy religion for the sureties to revoke their sureties and thereby represent an uneven taking part in to create. subject within the prosecution of the case.”
The choose at first occasion, Jude Onwuegbuzie, adjourned the case till February 26, 2024 to listen to the requests.
Photograph credit score: Getty
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