The Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, has been accused of conspiring with a notorious cartel to move suspicious cash from the Central Bank of Nigeria......Read The Full Article>>.....Read The Full Article>>
It was revealed that the syndicate’s operation was intercepted after four inspectors identified a suspicious consignment at Abuja airport on August 26, 2023.
A report by Peoples Gazette stated that five suspects were taken into custody, leading to a weeks-long financial crimes investigation.
The suspects described themselves as ‘contractors’ and provided statements to the police explaining how long they had been in the illicit business but failed to provide the identities of the CBN staff they worked with to move the cash from the apex bank’s vault.
According to these men, they had been operating for years even before the naira redesign in 2022. They transported cash notes from the CBN in Abuja to Lagos. However, the suspects, failed to state the purpose of the stacks of mint notes in their possession.
They had bundles of N500 and N200 notes totalling tens of millions of naira and were trying to load the money into a Lagos-bound aircraft at the domestic wing of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja in a manner that further aroused the suspicion of security agents.
As the suspects were about to be charged, the IGP monitoring unit showed up to take over the case. The five suspects, including their ringleader Andrew Ejah, were extracted from AIG Zone 7 and subsequently released.
However, the suspects refused to take back the money, claiming some was missing. They were apprehended with N75 million but only saw N32 million, indicating that more than half of the money was gone. Their claims led the IG to arrest and detain the four police inspectors who carried out their arrest.
The first orderly room trial was conducted in December 2023, and the inspectors —Ekende Edwin, Esther Okafor, Patrick Nwande and Talabi Kayode — were exonerated. The activities of the suspects were not only suspicious but their statements were also contradictory.
The first trial found the officers not guilty of the allegations of exhibit tampering, meaning there was no evidence the officers stole from the cash the suspects were transporting.
The trial also determined that there was no receipt documenting how much money the suspects were transporting.
During the trial, the suspects provided a statement to the police stating that they got the money from the CBN vault but wouldn’t be able to mention the person who handed over the cash to them from the CBN, leading the court to exonerate the inspectors.
When contacted a spokeswoman for the CBN did not return a request seeking clarification on whether or not the bank was aware of Mr Ejah’s gang’s operation.
Egbetokun, who was not satisfied with the first trial’s outcome, ordered a second trial, but the verdict remained the same as there was no sufficient evidence to link the alleged stolen funds to the inspectors.
Egbetokun ordered a third orderly room trial, causing disquiet from the police hierarchy to the rank-and-file who wondered why the IGP was unwilling to accept the trial’s verdict, given they were his own men.
Concerns were raised as to why Egbetokun refused to quit the chase at the low-level police officers, particularly after two trials had cleared them of any wrongdoing.
