A Federal High Court in Abuja has ordered the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to deposit the $9.7 million and £74,000 that were taken from Mr. Andrew Yakubu Magu, the former Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
Two weeks ago, Anaedoonline.ng revealed that the EFCC had challenged a High Court ruling that had rejected the former NNPC boss’s claims of money laundering, represented by Mr. Faruk Abdullah.
The anti-graft agency informed the Federal High Court in Abuja yesterday that the confiscated funds are still being treated as a topic of an ongoing legal dispute because the commission had challenged the court’s previous ruling.
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Therefore, the attorney for the EFCC asked the court to reject an appeal that the former NNPC GMD had filed to order it to return the money to him.
Remember that following his acquittal on fraud charges, Magu filed lawsuits against the EFCC, CBN, and the Guaranty Trust Bank in an attempt to reclaim the $9,773,200.00 and £74,000.00 that had been taken from him.
On February 3, 2017, EFCC agents raided the former NNPC chief’s Kaduna property and found $9.8 million and £74,000 hidden in a fireproof safe.
Yakubu urged the court in an initial summons with the markings FHC/ABJ/CS/231/2023 to decide whether the EFCC should continue to hold his seized funds after the verdict.
But in a ruling delivered on Monday, Justice Inyang Ekwo stated that he had concluded that the EFCC and CBN had not been honest regarding the whereabouts of the money at issue in the lawsuit.
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The judge said, “Therefore, the proper order to make in this case is that which can assure all parties that the sums are in the custody that can make them retrievable by any of the parties entitled thereto eventually, pending the determination of the appeal lodged by the Federal Government against the decision of a sister court in suit number: FHC/ABJ/CR/43/2017.”
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