An EFCC official named Alvan Gurumnaan has testified against former CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele, revealing how the latter allegedly received $17.1 million in cash through a proxy for three years.
While testifying to the Lagos State Special Offences Court sitting in Ikeja as the eighth prosecution witness, Gurumnaan told Justice Rahman Oshodi that the monies were received between 2020 and 2023.
The witness disclosed that the monies came in tranches and were handed over to Emefiele’s associate, and co-defendant in the case, Henry Omoile.
Emefiele and Omoile face a 19-count charge filed against them by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
The charges include corrupt demands and gratification totalling $4.5 billion and ₦2.8 billion.
In his testimony on Tuesday, Gurumnaan shared that he investigated the defendants as the head of the special operations team of the EFCC.
He told the court how intelligence reports against Emefiele led the commission to carry out extensive investigations.
“In the course of the investigation, we met the second defendant, Omoile, and we invited him to our office.
“We found the intelligence credible and we swung into action by writing several letters of investigation activities to CBN where we requested documents and for officers of the banks, from trade and exchange department, currency operations and banking supervision, legal, HR and many other departments to report to our office to give explanation.
“We also wrote to the Code of Conduct Bureau, the Corporate Affairs Commission, several commercial banks, and the FMDQ.
“After collating the information, we invited officers from those departments and put questions to them, and their responses were recorded. Some of them were detained and released to reliable sureties.
“We had reasons to invite some staff who worked directly with the first defendant both in the CBN HQ in Abuja and the annex in Lagos. Some of them include Monday Osazuwa, John Adetola, and John Ogar.
“One name that featured prominently in our investigation was one Eric Odoh, who was PA to the first defendant, Emefiele. We made frantic efforts to bring him in for question,s but he was nowhere to be found. We later received intelligence that he had absconded and gone out of the country. Reports traced him to Canada,the Dominican Republic and many other places.
“Which means he’s now being looked for by international police and we placed him on a watch list and declared him wanted. He has since not been found.
“However, when one of the staff members, Monday Osazuwa, was invited, we interviewed him, and he confirmed that he knew the first defendant from when they worked together in Zenith Bank.
“The first defendant was MD, Zenith, and when he was appointed to CBN, he facilitated the employment of Osazuwa to join him as a senior supervisor in the Lagos office of the CBN,” he said.
Speaking further, Gurumnaan added that Osazuwa confirmed that he ran errands for the first defendant both at Zenith and CBN, and some of them were official, while others were personal.
According to him, the personal errands Osazuwa ran included when he received a call from the first defendant and told him to call someone who was in London at the time.
Osazuwa said he gave him the number of a businessman with an office address in Victoria Island, Lagos.
“From September 2020 to June 2, 2023, just a week before the first defendant was suspended from office, this businessman gave him a total of $17.1 million dollars to give to Emefiele.
“The monies were sent through Osazuwa and upon receiving those sums, Osazuwa went to the first defendant’s (Emefiele’s) house in Lagos where he handed over the monies to the second defendant, Omoile”.
“The second defendant then transmitted the monies to the first defendant. In other instances, he transmitted the monies to the first defendant personally.
“Most of these transactions took place on Fridays when the first defendant was working out of his offices in Lagos,” he added.
Subsequently, the EFCC tendered in evidence all documents gathered concerning the transactions.