February 1, 2022

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, (EFCC), on Tuesday, tendered the judgment of a court, convicting Abdulrasheed Maina, Chairman, defunct Pension Reform Task Team to prison in evidence against former Head of Service, Stephen Oronsaye at the Federal High Court, Abuja.

At the resumed trial on Tuesday, the Prosecution Counsel, Mr Oluwaleke Atolagbe tendered the judgment through Ms Rukayat Ibrahim, the prosecution’s 20th witness in the ongoing trial.

Ibrahim who had been giving her testimony in the trial in the last one year, told the court that the commission had succeeded in securing a conviction of Maina and sentencing him to eight years in prison for N2.7 billion pension fraud.

She said the money was in the pensions fund and investigation revealed that the money was approved by Oronsaye.

Ibrahim added that Maina opened five fictitious accounts in a bank and used them to siphon the money from the pension fund for his personal use.

“Our investigation revealed that Abdulrasheed Maina took advantage of the fact that his brother worked with one of the commercial banks and opened the accounts in contravention to provisions of the Money Laundering Act.

“The accounts were opened without carrying out “know your customer”, they were operated through SMS and emails and our investigations showed that although they had fictitious names, they were operated by Abdulrasheed Maina even though his name and picture did not appear on any of the accounts.

” We were able to link them to him through his signature on his extra judicial statement, the phone number used to receive alerts and some payments from those accounts were traced to his real account.”

The witness also said that investigation revealed that on July 15, 2010, a sum of over N101 million was transferred to Oronsaye’s account.

According to her, when the commission asked for an explanation, Oronsaye gave an unclear explanation and brought a letter from the presidency that the money was sent to the presidency.

She further told the court that the letter did not represent  virement of the money.

The trial judge, Justice Inyang Ekwo subsequently adjourned the matter until Feb. 3 for cross-examination of the witness.

Oronsaye is being tried, alongside others, for allegedly using inflated biometrics enrollment contracts, collective allowances and other schemes to siphon money from accounts in which pensioners funds were kept.(NAN)