N1.9billion pension fund fraud: How UBA’s employed police prosecutor, Adama Musa is manipulating court case

The N1.9billion pension fund fraud case involving the United Bank for Africa (UBA) is still ongoing in court, but it is worthy of note how SP Adama Musa, the prosecutor representing UBA has been manipulating defendants.

One of the shocking precedence in this case is the manipulative nature of the police prosecutor, SP Adama, who boasts of prosecuting more than 40 percent of Kuje inmates. His lack of hearing notices to defendants’ lawyers sometimes or changing court charges at will has helped him to force prosecution on defendants without proper preparation for defences. Bias adjustments of charges is another common deliberate wicked act dominant in this matter.

 

This is a story of how a total sum of N1,911,928,957,18 belonging to a pension fund administrator was fraudulently moved from the coffers of UBA though reliable source confirmed to us that greater percentage of the funds have been paid back to UBA Plc by the insurance company.

Newscarte’s investigations revealed that the money was moved from the UBA Treasury account in five tranches between 25 March, 2020 to 5 June, 2020. The first four tranches of the fraudulent transaction were over N400 million each, while the last one, which took place in June, was N200million plus.

The over N1.9 billion was moved from the Pension Fund Administrator’s account (PFA) PAL Pensions Alliance.

It’s worthy of note that between 25 March and 5 June when these monies were moved from UBA coffers, the bank did not even notice until July ending. It was the IRT detectives that called UBA’s attention to the fraud. This is a testament to the bank’s weak and vulnerable security system.

Investigations further revealed that three UBA Treasury staff headed by Mr Osita Omeje were authorizers of the fraud. Others are Dirisu Sunday and Nappy Ngbale Aiyegbusi. It was learnt that one of them had only been promoted once in the over eight years of working with the bank. Rather than fix its abysmal internal security, the management of UBA decided to block over 200 accounts of innocent customers suspected to be linked to the alleged fraudsters. When such customers go to the bank to complain at the customer care unit, they will be arrested. It turned out that virtually all the people whose accounts were frozen are innocent vendors or professionals at different fields, who were patronized by the suspected fraudsters.

One of the three UBA staff in a police statement said they didn’t notice caution on the mail before processing and approving the transactions because of the heavy workload they face on a daily basis.

The standard practice is that before such an amount of money can be transferred to another account, there must be an instruction (mail) from UBA pension to UBA treasury department. In this case, the instruction was forged and the e-mail of the UBA officials in charge was cloned. At UBA Treasury level, the mail flagged, and they saw that it was a fraudulent mail, but they still went ahead to authorize it. Meanwhile, UBA handled its erring officers with kid’s gloves, as they didn’t face any legal consequence, only questioned internally and left off the hook.

Meanwhile, the Investigative Police Officers (IPO) in charge of the case, then DSP Barau Iliyasu and DSP William Buba, were having a field day milking and extorting the other parties involved in the scam. Over 200 innocent bank customers who had legal transactions with the culprits were arrested and extorted by the investigating officers. Several bureau de change company account holders have to settle the officers after reversing the funds that entered their accounts.

Newscarte gathered that on several occasions, delegates were sent to Tony Elumelu, the CEO of UBA, to forgive and let go after funds have been recouped from the suspects and since there was evidence of negligence from his bank employees whom say the suspicious mails and ignored, but all efforts proved abortive.

Investigations further revealed that UBA’s
Recovery Officer, Oladimeji Ojo and Barrister Akin Adesomoju (they supervised the sale of recovered properties) initially had an agreement with the alleged suspects in court that if they surrender all their properties, they will no longer be prosecuted.
But a few months after surrendering the properties, which they signed off under duress while in detention, the matter was still taken to court in Abuja.

The investigation of the case initially started at Lion Building, Lagos before it was moved to Panti and later, Abuja where it is still being heard at a FCT High Court.

UBA has already confiscated properties from the suspects ( both those that are traceable and not traceable to the fraud) and they have sold them yet still putting them as evidence in the court of law.

These aforementioned malpractices and incitements only make one to ponder on Maxim legal term which goes, “He who comes to equity must approach the court with clean hands”. It’s commonly understood that the maxim means that a claimant should be deprived of all court-based remedies, because of some dishonesty, misrepresentation, illegality or unfairness.

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