A prosecution witness, Abubakar Madaki, has given an account of how a former Director-General of the National Broadcasting Commission, Emeka Mba and four others, fraudulently transferred N2.9bn belonging to the commission to different private bank accounts.
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He gave the narrative before Justice Mojisola Giwa-Ogunbanjo of the Federal High Court, Abuja, on Wednesday and Thursday.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission is prosecuting Mba alongside former NBC director of finance, Patrick Areh, alleged owner of Technology Advisor, Basil Udotai, and Babatunji Amure, alleged owner of Divine Partners and Technology Advisors.
They are on trial for alleged criminal diversion and stealing of NBC’s funds to the tune of N2.9bn meant for the purchase of setup boxes for a switch-over from the current analogue to digital system of broadcasting in the country.
The EFCC spokesman, Wilson Uwujaren explained in a statement on Friday that Madaki, who appeared as the 13th prosecution witness, tendered a total of 16 documents as exhibits, unearthed in the cause of investigating the fraudulent transactions.
The prosecution counsel, Chile Okoroma, tendered the Certified True Copies of the exhibits in court.
Madaki revealed to the court that in 2015, Mba and Areh made an inflated fixed deposit of the sum of N13.890bn, as collateral with Zenith Bank to enable them to offset the liabilities accruing from the execution of the digital setup boxes.
“We discovered that the entire sets of boxes were to cost N9bn and some fractions, however for reasons best known to the first and second defendant, N13.890bn was paid to Zenith Bank,” he added.
He disclosed that on September 10, 2015, the first and second defendants issued a mandate order to the bank to move the funds to other accounts without reference to the first letter of claims of the collateral.
“On 10, 2015, the first and second defendants sent a letter to the bank, contrary to the first letter of claims that the funds should be moved out of that account to a Zenith bank’s collateral account, which became suspicious,” he said.
According to him, that was why he probed the transaction and discovered that only N3.7bn out of the N13bn was used to raise the letter of credit for the manufacturing of the setup boxes.
He explained that the balance of N10.61bn and some fractions was ordered to be transferred to EFCC’s recovery account, after which former President Goodluck Jonathan directed that the funds should be moved back to NBC’s account to enable them to continue their work.
Justice Ogunbanjo adjourned the proceeding to October 22, 23 and 24, for continuation of trial.
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