One year after he was ordered by the Supreme Court to return to the Federal High Court in Lagos to face his trial, the former Managing Director of the defunct Intercontinental Bank Plc, Dr. Erastus Akingbola has been re-arraigned before Justice Mojisola Olatoregun over allegations of fraud. Akingbola was first arraigned before Justice Mohammed Idris on August 13, 2010 on a 26-count charge of fraud, granting reckless credit facility, abuse of office and mismanagement of depositor’s funds.
Akingbola, was also accused of creating or causing to be created a false or misleading appearance of active trading in the shares of Intercontinental Bank on the Nigerian Stock Exchange by approving utilization of N179,385,000,000 of the bank’s funds for the purchase of the bank’s shares between November, 2007 and July, 2008. The offence is said to be contrary to Section 105(1) (a) of the Investment and Securities Act 2007 and punishable under Section 115(a) of the same Act. He pleaded not guilty to the charge.
The case was later transferred to Justice Charles Archibong on October 25, 2010, but two years later, the judge struck out the charge for want of diligent prosecution by lawyers to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). However, on 20th February, 2015 the Court of Appeal, Lagos Division overturned the Federal High Court’s decision striking out the charges against Akingbola. Akingbola’s appeal to Supreme Court was also dismissed by the apex court, who on May 18, 2018, ordered the former bank chief to return to the Federal High Court to answer to the charges slammed on him by the EFCC.
At the resumed hearing of the matter on Tuesday, a prosecution witness told the court that Akingbola had only 10, 000 pounds in his domiciliary account before he allegedly transferred the bank’s 8.5million pounds into the account domiciled in England. Jimoh, a former Chief Inspector of the defunct bank further testified that the illegal transfers were made between March 16 and May 13, 2009, and that Akingbola used Inter- Capital Market Limited (ICML), a subsidiary of the bank to carry out the transaction by unilaterally increasing its lifeline from N2 billion to N5 billion.
Jimoh stated further in his testimony that it was from this increase that ICML gave N2.1 billion to another company, Mega Investment Company Limited, belonging to Dr Raymond Obieri, Chairman of Intercontinental bank. The witness also alleged that the N2.1 billion was distributed to some bureau de change operatives who converted it to foreign currencies after exchanging it with their customers, and that 8.5 million pounds was paid by one Loveth into the account of Fulgher, a United Kingdom based company in charge of leasing Intercontinental bank offices with Royal Bank of Scotland.
According to him the money was later transferred to Akingbola’s domiciliary account which was an irregular banking practice. The first prosecution witness, who is a bank examiner with the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC), Paul Ndubuisi, had earlier tendered a report containing outcome of investigations carried out by his team on the bank’s books in 2009. Ndubuisi had also told the court that the loan to deposit ratio of the bank was 107 percent which is higher than the statutory 48 percent.
The witness added that the quality of the bank’s asset was low owing to the fact that about 48 percent of the total credit portfolio was non-performing. Under cross-examination by Akingbola’s lawyer, Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN), the witness disclosed that he was not the person that made the report available to the EFCC. Asked why the investigation was carried out when Akingbola was on annual vacation, the witness said: “On 18th June, 2009, we moved to the bank for the examination. We were informed that the MD was on annual vacation.
The MD’s absence did not stop us from commencing our examination. This was because the bank is an entity on its own”. He added that he was not aware if the report was later forwarded to the bank for its response. Justice Olatoregun adjourned further proceedings till Wednesday.
