In two documents tendered before the Justice Rilwan Aikawa-led court on Thursday, the anti-graft agency said the disbursements, which it termed bribes, were contained in a document entitled, “Security and Transportation per State”, and another one tagged, “Kwara State”.
In a document, the Resident Assistant Inspector-General of Police in Kwara State was said to have collected N1m cash at the time. While the then Commissioner of Police in Kwara State allegedly received N10m cash, the Deputy Commissioner of Police in charge of Operations was, according to the document, paid a cash sum of N2m.
Similarly, both the Assistant Commissioners of Police in charge of operations and administration in Kwara State, according to the document, received N1m cash each.
The document also showed that the Resident Electoral Commissioner in Kwara State for the 2015 general elections was also given a cash of N10m, while the Independent National Electoral Commission’s Administrative Secretary in Kwara State at the time received N5m cash.
The INEC Head of Department, Operations and “his boys” were given N5m, while “other officers” received and shared N2m among themselves.
Also listed as beneficiaries of the Diezani bribe in Kwara State were OC Mopol and “his men”, who got N7m; 21c Mopol and men in the state, who got N10m; the Director of the Department of State Services, DSS, and his men, who got N2.5m.
The military in Kwara State was bribed with N50m, according to the document, while other security agencies including the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC, and the Federal Road Safety Corps, FRSC, got N20m.
An investigator with the EFCC, Usman Zakari, who brought the documents to court during the trial of a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, Mr. Dele Belgore, said they were recovered from the defendant’s house.
Belgore is standing trial before Justice Aikawa for allegedly collecting N450m from Diezani and distributing same to beneficiaries in Kwara State.
The EFCC accused him of handling the money in cash without going through any financial institution, an act said to be an offence under sections 1(a), 16(d), 15(2)(d) and 18(a) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) (Amendment) Act, 2012.
The EFCC said Belgore is liable to be punished under sections 15(3)(4), and 16(2)(b) of the same Act.
Standing trial along with Belgore for the offence is a former Minister of National Planning, Prof. Abubakar Suleiman.
The SAN and Suleiman were arraigned on charges of money laundering on February 8, 2017 but they pleaded not guilty.
Zakari is the second witness to be called by the EFCC in its efforts to prove its case.
Testifying before Justice Aikawa on Thursday, Zakari stated that Belgore volunteered the list to the EFCC when he was invited and interrogated by the anti-graft agency.
Among the beneficiaries were 15 electoral officers who each received, 250,000; 15 supervisors, who got N100,000 each; the state Returning Officer, who got N1m, among others.
The two documents were tendered by the EFCC prosecutor, Mr. Rotimi Oyedepo, and admitted in evidence as Exhibit 7 and 7A, against Belgore and Suleiman, as their lawyers, Mr. Ebun Shofunde SAN and Mr. Olatunji Ayanlaja SAN, raised no objection.
In his evidence, Zakari told the court that the EFCC’s findings showed that the money was disbursed in cash to the beneficiaries.
“My Lord, the mode of payment, as contained in Exhibit 7, is cash payment. The payments were not done through any financial institution,” Zakari said.
Meanwhile, the presiding judge heard Belgore’s application seeking the dismissal of the charges on the grounds that the EFCC failed to attach an affidavit showing that it had concluded investigation in the case before bringing the case to court.
Moving the application on Thursday, Belgore’s lawyer, Shofunde, argued that the failure of the EFCC to attach an affidavit saying it had concluded investigation before filing the charges was a fundamental breach of the Federal High Court Practice Direction and which had rendered the charges incompetent.
He then urged Justice Aikawa to quash the charges and free his client.
But opposing the application, EFCC’s lawyer, Oyedepo argued that the current law governing criminal cases in the country was the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) 2015.
He argued that the ACJA did not list filling of the said affidavit as one of the conditions that must be fulfilled before a criminal charge could be filed in court, stressing that the provisions of the ACJA were superior to that of the Federal High Court Practice Direction.
Besides, he referred Justice Aikawa to Section 221 of the ACJA which barred a judge from entertaining any application challenging the competence of charges in a criminal case in the middle of trial and Section 396(2) of the Act, which barred a judge from ruling on any such application until judgment is delivered in the case.
While urging the judge to dismiss the application, the prosecuting counsel stated that granting it would “amount to slaughtering justice on the altar of technicality”.
Justice Aikawa adjourned till July 7 for ruling.
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