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Exclusive: How over N1.9billion pension fund was fraudulently moved from Tony Elumelu’s UBA treasury account

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157D45A0 FA77 40E7 8EC5 760CFA7E41CD
Elemelu/UBA Building

With the high rate of cybercrime and other bank related frauds in the country, it is a fact that most of the thefts are made possible with the support of some unscrupulous bank staffs, aided by the vulnerable security system of the financial institutions. One bank that is currently enmeshed in this scandal is the United Bank for Africa (UBA). The bank arguably has one of the weakest security systems when it comes to the safety of customers’ funds in their custody. 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.

Investigations revealed that the money was moved out 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 greater percentage of 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 Pension processors in charge were 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 Treasury handled its erring officers with kid’s gloves, as they didn’t face any legal consequence, only questioned internally and left off the hook, while some UBA Pension staffs, a subsidiary of UBA group were axed.

Meanwhile, the Investigative Police Officers (IPO) in charge of the case, then DSP Barau Iliyasu, DSP William Buba and others, were having a field day milking and extorting the other parties involved in the fraud. Over 100 innocent bank customers who had legal transactions with the culprits were arrested and extorted by the investigating officers. Consequently, before most accounts were opened back, these officers were collecting monies, as well had percentage from recovered funds. Many alleged suspects also testified to the unprofessional act of these officers where most were tortured, restricted from seeing their lawyers before taking their statements and limit visitations.

It was gathered that on several occasions, delegates were sent to Tony Elumelu, the CEO of UBA group, to forgive and let go after funds have been recouped from the suspects and since there was evidence of negligence from his bank employees, but all efforts proved abortive. Some argue that rather than Tony Elumelu declining to forgive the alleged suspects, being a seasoned professional, a philanthropist and a kind man of the people, he should deduce a learning curve from this mishap, move on from this and ensure a stronger internal processing of transactions.

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 that if they surrender all their properties, they will no longer be prosecuted.
Surprisingly, few months after surrendering the properties, which they signed off under duress and 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 again, same matter just because UBA lawyers/ prosecutor just want to force prosecution took the matter to different High courts in FCT.

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

The maxim 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 equitable remedies, because of some dishonesty, misrepresentation, illegality or unfairness. Sometimes an application of the principles means that the entire case is struck out or summarily dismissed. This case can be likened to Maxim.

(C)Newscarte

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