According to SaharaReporters, some implicating documents to prove that Senate President, Bukola Saraki, made a series of questionable deposits and illegal withdrawals from banks in order to launder stolen funds through shell companies have surfaced.
SaharaReporters have continued in the exposure of the can of worms covered by the former Governor of Kwara state and the Senate President of the 8th Assembly, Senator Bukola Saraki.
According to the online platform, the police investigation of the financial activities of the Senate President has yielded positive results. The police investigation found that Mr. Saraki, during his tenure as Governor of Kwara State, was the “prime promoter” of several shell companies, including Skyview Properties Ltd., Limkers Ltd., Dicetrade Ltd., Carlisle Properties and Investment Ltd., and the parent company known as Joy Petroleum.
Senator Saraki’s moneymaking scheme, according to the details of the Special Fraud Unit’s investigation, was to withdraw millions of naira disguised as loans from GTBank, Intercontinental Bank and Zenith Bank Plc. The funds were then moved into different accounts, sometimes under the guise that the purpose was to pay off some bank debts with other “loans.”
A part of the investigation discovered that Senator Saraki at various times withdrew N11 billion from the Intercontinental Bank, N160 million from Zenith Bank, and N204 million from GTBank. According to the report, “the investigation also saw evidence of a N200 million loan facility that was availed by Zenith Bank to Joy Petroleum Ltd.”
During an interrogation, Mr. Saraki admitted to owning all these companies with the exception of Joy Petroleum. The owner of Joy Petroleum, the senator claimed, was his former personal assistant, Mathew Obahor. He also added that Mr. Obahor administered the other companies throughout his tenure as Governor of Kwara State.
However, the investigators believed that Mr. Saraki lied to them about Obahor’s role. They found out that Mr. Obahor was “sick and in a vegetative state and could not have instructed the bank” to make financial transactions in the name of Joy Petroleum or any of other companies.
As the special investigators reviewed Bukola Saraki’s statements they found that Zenith Bank issued a loan in Saraki’s name on November 25, 2009 for N160 million.
When pressured, the bank provided two incriminating documents including “(1) an internal [bank] ledger statement of account in the name of Dr. Bukola Saraki showing a debit withdrawal of N160 million on 26/11/2009 and a credit deposit of N11,901369.98 on 26/05/2010. (2) A page of the bank’s Manager’s Cheque register showing that a draft of N160 million in favor of Joy Petroleum Ltd was signed for by one Uche Phillips.”
The investigation noted, “Bukola Saraki, who was purportedly granted a N160 million loan with which a draft of N160 million was made in the name of Joy Petroleum Ltd, was not a customer of Zenith Bank. He neither maintains a current nor saving account with the Zenith Bank that claimed to have granted him the loan.”
These among several others were the allegations levelled against Senate President Bukola Saraki. Efforts to reach the Senate President by the media has failed and there was no official response from him concerning the allegations as at the time of filing this report.
No comments:
Post a Comment