Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) agents on Tuesday raided the Epe home of the immediate former governor of Lagos state, Mr Akinwumi Ambode.
Its spokesman, Mr Tony Orilade, EFCC, who confirmed this, said that the anti-graft agency had received petitions against the governor.
He said that the raid was in connection with an ongoing investigation into finances of Lagos State during the former governor’s administration.
“It is just the continuation of the ongoing investigation,” Orilade said.
Earlier this month, the commission had secured a court permission to freeze three accounts of the state. The accounts are domiciled in First City Monument Bank, Access Bank and Zenith Bank.
The accounts, EFCC said, needed to be frozen until the conclusion of the investigation and possible prosecution of Adewale Adesanya, the permanent secretary in the Office of the Chief of Staff to former Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, who operated the accounts.
EFCC said the FCMB account received “a huge inflow of N9,927,714,443.29” from the accounts of Lagos State Government.
The agency’s records showed that the account was opened on September 18, less than a month to the day Ambode finally lost a primary election to his main challenger then, Babajide Sanwo-Olu.
“There have been concerted efforts and attempts to dissipate the contents of the accounts listed in the schedule to this application,” EFCC lawyer Mohammed Abbas told Justice Chuka Obiozor of the Federal High Court sitting in Ikoyi, Lagos, on August 6.
“Without freezing the nominated accounts and temporarily forfeiting the money to the Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, there is no way the fraud being perpetrated using the scheduled accounts can be stopped.”
The EFCC had prayed the court to freeze the accounts pending the conclusion of an investigation and possible prosecution of Adewale Adesanya, permanent secretary in the office of the chief of staff to the governor of the state, for money laundering.
Kungmi Daniel, a member of the EFCC investigating team, said the anti-graft agency discovered “a huge inflow of N9,927,714,443.29” from the state accounts into an FCMB bank account opened on September 17, 2018 during the administration of Ambode.
He said the account was operated by Adesanya.
Ambode, however, said he has nothing to do with the said accounts.
“Those accounts were opened in the course of normal operations by the Lagos state government for its administrative purposes and not for the former governor’s personal transactions as was being wrongly insinuated and have been operated to ensure smooth operations of government activities by previous and present administrations,” he had said in statement issued by Habib Aruna, his media aide.
“The former governor was not and will never be involved in any unauthorized use of government property and resources.”
Distancing himself from the accounts, Ambode who served as governor between 2015 and 2019. said that no account of his contained N9.9 billion let alone being frozen by the EFCC.
He had explained in a statement by his media aide, Mr Habib Aruna, that the accounts in question that were frozen by the Federal High Court belong to the Lagos State Government and not to him or any individual.
According to the former governor, “Those accounts were opened in the course of normal operations by the Lagos State Government for its administrative purposes and not for the former governor’s personal transactions as was being wrongly insinuated and have been operated to ensure smooth operations of government activities by previous and present administrations.”
The statement said: ”The former governor was not and will never be involved in any unauthorized use of government property and resources.
“We strongly believe that after four demanding years as Chief Executive of Lagos State, Mr Ambode is entitled to some deserved rest with his family and loved ones without the unwarranted attacks on his well-earned reputation.”
It added that the former governor believed that at this time in the nation’s polity, all hands must be on deck to support “our great Party the All Progressives Congress (APC) both at the State and national levels in order to continue to deliver the dividends of democracy to Lagosians and Nigerians respectively.”
The Guardian
