From Godwin Tsa, Abuja
A prosecution witness and operative of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Rouqayya Ibrahim, has given a blow-by-blow account of how N14 billion was stolen from pension funds of the Head of Service.
The witness, an investigator with the ant-graft agency, further told a Federal High Court that former Head of Service of the Federation (HOSF), Elder Steve Oronsaye, had 66 illegal accounts.
He made the revelation yesterday as the former Head of Service alleged that he made his statement to EFCC under duress.
Consequently, Justice Gabriel Kolawole has ordered a trial-within-trial to be conducted to ascertain the genuineness or otherwise of his extra-judicial statement.
Meanwhile, Ibrahim, who was testifying in the ongoing trial of Orosanye, said she met him in the course of her investigation of pensions fund.
In her evidence in chief from the witness box, she said: “Sometime in 2010, EFCC and other anti-graft agencies were invited for verification of Pension in the civil service. During that time, my colleagues discovered a mandate for payment of pensioners bearing 32 names, which was suspicious to them, and based on that, they requested for further information on the mandate and the statement of account from office of the Head of Service.
“It was confirmed that some of the names on that list were fake pensioners. Based on that, EFCC instituted a pension fraud team to properly investigate activities of Head of Service in terms of pension payment.
“I was drafted to be a part of the team along with 10 of my colleagues,” she stated.
Speaking further, the witness said the team wrote letters to all the existing banks at the time to furnish them with the statement of account of all the accounts operated by Head of Service for pensioners as well as payment mandate.
“Based on their replies and letters written from the office of the Accountant General of the Federation, we discovered that the Head of Service was operating 66 illegal accounts. We also discovered that there were modus operanda used by the Pension office to syphon pensions fund into their account.
“We discovered that about N14 billion has been stolen from the pension funds of the Head of Service”.
The witness said her team equally discovered that the modus operanda included payment made into accounts of different companies for illegal and non-existing contracts.
Others are ghost pensioners, whereby names were inserted into pensions payroll and payment made to them even when they were not pensioners.
National Union of Pensioners and Association of Federal Civil Service Retirees were both alleged to have received payments from the pension accounts which were illegal payments.
A substantial amount was alleged to have been withdrawn and handed over to one Mr. Shuaibu, presently standing trial in one of the courts.”
She continued by telling the court how her team discovered through investigation, particularly, in biometric contract that over N600 million was paid to several companies with the exception of one company, which actually did some semblance of the contract.
“The company’s name was Innovative Solution and Uptrach Communications Limited. All the remaining payments were for non existing contracts.
However, at a point in the course of her testimony, the witness requested that she be allowed to use a chart to illustrate her findings. But when it was brought forward, the defence Counsels objected to it.