A former executive director of First Bank of Nigeria Plc, Mr
Dauda Lawal, has disclosed that he appeared before the Justice Ayo Salami-led
presidential panel to testify on an affidavit he earlier submitted to the
office of the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice over
the investigative deficiencies of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission,
EFCC under its suspended acting chairman, Ibrahim Magu.
Speaking through his counsel, Mr Patrick IIwueto, SAN, Lawal
said he repeated the allegations he made against the EFCC in a
counter-affidavit he filed before Justice Muslim Hassan of a Federal High Court
in 2017.
In a counter-affidavit he deposed to which formed the basis
for his invitation by the panel, Lawal said the EFCC detained him for 11 days
in 2016 and promised to release him only on the condition that he return some
funds.
The panel asked Lawal to testify without prejudice to his
ongoing corruption trial.
The EFCC had frozen Lawal’s accounts and applied for the
permanent forfeiture of his funds which the ex-banker challenged.
On how he received the $25m, Lawal said he received a call
from a friend, Stanley Lawson, on March 2015 to help collect the money, which
he subsequently paid into an account provided for him.
“I had no idea of the origin of the said funds and only
acted in the course of normal banking business,” he said.
The former banker said the EFCC allegedly compelled him to
provide funds he never received.
Lawal said in the affidavit, “Having been invited and
subsequently detained in Lagos for 11 consecutive days and without access to
members of my immediate family, the EFCC investigators kept suggesting and
insisting that there was a shortfall of $40m, which I had yet to account for.
“They were alleging that I had in fact taken $65m as opposed
to the $25m, which I stated that I had received. The EFCC investigators
interrogating me made it clear that the only way that I could/would leave
detention is if I made their suggested shortfall available to them.
“Because I never had this EFCC invented $40m to give, I had
to use my personal connections to source for and raised about 50 per cent of
the said amount while I was in detention. I managed to borrow some of the money
from the bank where I was an Executive Director and surrendered it to the EFCC
through my legal counsel and was eventually released from detention on May 20,
2016.
“Consequently, in a three-week period between May 13 and
June 6, 2016, I was made to surrender to the EFCC Recovery Account at the
Central Bank of Nigeria the total sum of N9.08bn,” he said.
Meanwhile, Magu’s lawyer, Mr. Wahab Shittu, in a statement
entitled ‘Re: Magu faces questions over assets declaration – Fresh Propaganda
Against Our Client Prejudicial to Panel Proceedings,’ said his client will no
longer condone allegations levelled against him.
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