Justice F. Giwa Ogunbanjo of\u00a0the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja on Monday, January 22, 2024, admitted a fresh exhibit against\u00a0Emmanuella Eteta Ita, Head of Stakeholders Unit of the Federal Inland Revenue Services, FIRS and Surestart School Ltd in\u00a0a\u00a0trial\u00a0within trial to determine the admissibility of\u00a0her statement with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.<\/p>\n
Ita and\u00a0Surestart School Ltd are standing trial on 25-count charges bordering on criminal misappropriation, diversion, criminal breach of trust and money laundering to the tune of N2billion. Ita\u2019s\u00a0counsel, Paul Erokoro\u00a0had\u00a0objected to the admissibility of the statement of\u00a0her client before the court, claiming that it was exacted from her under duress and in the absence of her counsel.<\/p>\n
This came even as the defendant reportedly volunteered her statement to EFCC’s investigators in the presence of\u00a0Eka Didara-Abasi Akpata, a lawyer from\u00a0the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS,\u00a0who accompanied her\u00a0to the EFCC\u00a0office.<\/p>\n
Ruling on the matter on Monday,\u00a0Justice Ogunbanjo\u00a0stated\u00a0that the defence did not prove beyond reasonable doubt that the statement of the defendant was not voluntary.<\/p>\n
Citing Section 15 of the Administration of Criminal Justice\u00a0Act, 2015, he further stated that\u00a0electronic recording of a\u00a0defendant\u2019s\u00a0statement\u00a0was not\u00a0mandatory,\u00a0so also the presence of a defendant\u2019s counsel.\u00a0With the ruling, the statement was admitted in evidence and\u00a0marked \u201cExhibit 25.\u201d<\/p>\n
Further on the matter, Ijeoma\u00a0Matilda, an\u00a0EFCC\u00a0operative, led\u00a0in evidence\u00a0by prosecuting counsel, Ekele Iheanacho, concluded her testimony\u00a0on the matter. According to her, the information provided by System Specs, a Federal government Remittance payment platform through which\u00a0funds were allegedly funneled into\u00a0Surestart School Ltd\u00a0between\u00a02017 and 2018,\u00a0amounted\u00a0to\u00a0N173,346,391.50.\u00a0Surestart School Ltd\u00a0is the second defendant, owned by the first defendant.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe observed\u00a0that\u00a0there were transfers to the tune of N145,218,000 from the account of the first defendant to the second defendant,\u00a0Surestart School Ltd. During the reconciliation with the defendant`s account she could not provide documents to justify the sum of N158million\u00a0which is the total money that came to her account.\u00a0And in a bid to explain,\u00a0she brought copies of receipts she signed which she claimed\u00a0were\u00a0receipts for Lomein Express Ltd. We contacted the owner of Lomein Express Ltd who said that the receipts did not emanate from them.<\/p>\n
She also brought letters of reimbursement, we invited all the companies she mentioned and they all denied that the receipts were from them while other addresses do not exist,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
While the first defendant also claimed\u00a0that she resigned as the director of Surestart School Ltd,\u00a0the prosecution witness revealed that\u00a0documents from the Corporate Affairs Commission, CAC,\u00a0established\u00a0that she was the owner of the\u00a0school. Speaking further, the witness stated that Ita has\u00a0refunded about N19.5million\u00a0so far,\u00a0which was made at different dates into the EFCC`s account domiciled with the CBN.<\/p>\n
According to the witness, \u201cWe requested for her salary account with Federal Inland Revenue Services, FIRS.\u00a0In the course of analyzing the account, we discovered that around 2016,\u00a0a\u00a0huge sum of money was moved into the second defendant`s\u00a0 account and\u00a0that\u00a0over\u00a0N277million\u00a0had entered into her salary account apart from her allowances, which were funds for travel allowance and entertainment expenses.\u201d<\/p>\n
Matilda\u00a0further revealed\u00a0that the frequency of money paid by the first defendant into the second defendant\u2019s\u00a0account\u00a0increased from February 2016\u00a0with every of\u00a0her salary\u00a0being\u00a0transferred to the second defendant\u2019s account.<\/p>\n
Justice Ogunbanjo adjourned the matter to January 23 and 24, 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Justice F. Giwa Ogunbanjo of\u00a0the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja on Monday, January 22, 2024, admitted a fresh exhibit against\u00a0Emmanuella Eteta Ita, Head of Stakeholders Unit of the Federal Inland Revenue Services, FIRS and Surestart School Ltd in\u00a0a\u00a0trial\u00a0within trial to determine the admissibility of\u00a0her statement with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC. Ita […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":16016,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[223],"class_list":["post-16015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abuja-reports","tag-efcc"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16015"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16017,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16015\/revisions\/16017"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}