EFCC DROPS CHARGES AGAINST NIGERIAN POLITICIAN DIEZANI ALISON-MADUEKE

According Daily Trust, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), has dropped all 14 count charges against former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke.

Since 2015, the first female president of OPEC, Diezani has been dogged by a series of corruption allegations, including the alleged diversion and distribution of N23 billion.

The EFCC was also said to have dropped the charges against Ben Otti, Nnamdi Okonkwo, Stanley Lawson, Lanre Adesanya, and Dauda Lawal, all of whom are former officials of commercial banks and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

The former minister has also been holed up in the United Kingdom where she also faces a separate probe for alleged bribery, corruption, and money laundering.

From then till date, the EFCC has obtained court rulings that have ordered the forfeiture of properties and funds linked to the former minister.

At the resumed hearing of the matter before Justice Muslim Hassan of a Federal High Court Lagos on November 5, 2019, the anti-graft agency, through its lawyer, Rotimi Oyedepo, dropped the corruption charges against most of the accused persons, including Diezani, through an amended four-count charge.

The amended charges, which border on money laundering, now only seeks to prosecute Lawal, a former Executive Director of First Bank Plc, alongside Diezani and Otti, who served as Group Executive Director of Finance at the NNPC.
Diezani and Otti have both reportedly been at large since the beginning of the matter which was first filed in court on November 28, 2018.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *