Lukman Olabiyi
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) yesterday, called its first witness in the ongoing trial of former Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Adeyemi Ikuforiji, charged with N338.8 million money laundering before the Federal High Court.
Ikuforiji was charged alongside his former Personal Assistant, Oyebode Atoyebi on 54 counts bordering on the offences.
They had pleaded not guilty before Justice Mohammed Liman ,and were allowed to continue on an earlier bail granted to them in 2012 when they were first arraigned.
On Wednesday, Mr Ekene Ihenacho, appeared for the prosecution while Mr Dele Adesina, (SAN), appeared for the defendants.
The prosecutor called his first witness, Mr Adebayo Adeniyi, an investigator with the EFCC.
The witness told the court that he has worked with the Commission for 15 years, adding that his schedule of duty included investigation, search, as well as any other duty relating to investigation.
The witness said that in June 2011, a petition was written against the first defendant for allegedly siphoning N500 million monthly from the State House of Assembly.
He said that the EFCC went into investigation and visited the House of Assembly in Lagos
He said that from the office of the Clerk, they recovered some document which were instrumental to their investigation, while the clerk was invited to the commission.
“We recovered some payment register and when we went through them, we discovered that a lot of cash payments were made to the second defendant, and we invited him to explain why the payments were made to him
“He told us that the payments were meant for the first defendant, and when we interrogated the first defendant, he actually confirmed that the second defendant was collecting the monies for him,” he said
The prosecutor then showed the witness a bulk of document and asked him to identify what the document were
In response, the witness identified pages one to 12 of the document as being the statement of the first defendant, pages 13 to 24 as the statement of the second defendant, while pages 25 to 237 as other documents recovered from the clerk’s office.
The prosecutor then sought to tender the bulky document numbered 1 to 237 before the court.
Justice Liman fixed Oct. 14 for continuation of trial.