The Federal High Court in Lagos on Wednesday heard how a lawyer-turned activist, Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, allegedly disbursed N61 million paid as rent on a forfeited property.
The second prosecution witness, a compliance officer at Zenith Bank Plc, Mr. Teslim Adekunle, tendered Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa & Co’s bank account statement.
He said N61, 631,944.65 was credited to the account by Transocean Support Vendor S/A on August 13, 2013.
Before then, there was a credit balance of N1.4 million in the account, he said.
Adekunle said from the account, N3 million was transferred to Apex Properties Company Limited, N2.2 million to Adegboruwa, N12,150,000 to Mr. Jonathan Udeagbala (owner of the house) and N35 million to Victory Electronics Limited (the complainant Mr. Leonard Okafor’s company).
An attempt by the witness to give evidence on the transfer of N1 million to an unnamed pastor was resisted by Adegboruwa’s lawyer, Mr. Tayo Oyetibo (SAN), who objected on the ground that his client’s personal life was not in review before the court.
He said: “All this evidence of cash disbursement is not relevant to the charge. The charge is that he sold a forfeited property. The section of EFCC Act under which he was charged has nothing to do with cash disbursement. Precious judicial time is being wasted through this line of evidence.”
Justice Oluremi Oguntoyibo then asked the prosecution counsel to restrict himself to questions relating to the charge.
Under cross-examination, the witness said he did not know the purpose for which the money was transferred to Adegboruwa’s account.
EFCC arraigned Adegboruwa and Jonathan Udeagbala, said to be at large, on May 12 for allegedly conspiring on August 13, 2013 to lease the property at House 105, NICON Town Estate, Lekki.
The commission said the property was a “subject of interim orders of attachment made by Justice Christopher Balogun of the Lagos State High Court” on June 18, 2012.
Adegboruwa allegedly leased the property to Shelf Drilling Nigeria Limited for N61, 631,944.65, which was credited to his Zenith Bank account, with number 1010240758.
The lawyer pleaded not guilty to the charge and claimed he was being persecuted due to his activism.
Justice Oguntoyibo adjourned to September 23, 28 and 29 for continuation of trial.
No comments:
Post a Comment