N109bn fraud: EFCC didn’t promise ex-AGF won’t be prosecuted, says witness

Abdulhamid Isa Muri, the third prosecution witness in the ongoing trial of the former Accountant General of the Federation (AGF), Ahmed Idris, on Tuesday, June 25, 2024, told the Federal Capital Territory High Court in Abuja that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) did not promise the defendant that he would not be prosecuted for his N109 billion alleged loot.

Muri is a staff of the EFCC whose duties involve intelligence gathering, conducting surveillance, partaking in undercover operations, interacting with informants and any other duty legally assigned by the Director of investigations or Zonal Director of Kano State Command.

At the resumed proceedings on Tuesday, Muri while narrating how the former AGF made his statement voluntarily, said the EFCC did not make such promises to the defendant.

According to the witness, he met Idris through the former Kano State Zonal Commander, Faruk Dogon Daji, who introduced him to the defendant and informed him that the former AGF came to submit some documents linked to the investigation.

He said: On June 10, 2022, the first defendant went to our office and met the then zonal commander, Mr Faruk Dogon Daji, an Assistant Commander of EFCC, ACEI, in his office and based on this, the Zonal Commander sent for me and told me that the first defendant came to submit some documents that are linked to the investigation that was on-going concerning him and that I should take him to my office to write a about the documents.

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“The first defendant in company of one Lawal Badamasi followed me to my office and the office is an open office where everybody can come in and go out and there in the office, there is one Mubarak, a staff of the commission and Yusuf Baba Yusuf.

“I administered a cautionary word, I told him his rights, I wrote out the cautionary word and he said he understood and thereafter he volunteered his statement mentioning the documents one after the other and signed the documents with the date of that day.”

When confronted by the prosecution counsel, A.O. Atolagbe, with the allegation of the EFCC promising the defendant that the anti-graft agency will not prosecute him, Muri said the commission did not make such a promise to the defendant.

“It is not true my Lord; I am not the investigation officer, I am just directed to take his statement,” he said.

According to Muri, the former AGF was not detained in the facility of the Kano Zonal Command of the EFCC.

Presiding judge Justice Halilu Yusuf later discharged the witness after the cross-examination and adjourned the matter till October 29, 2024, for defence of trial-within-trial after the counsel to the first defendant cross-examined the witness.

Idris is being prosecuted by the EFCC on 14-count charges bordering on money laundering to the tune of N109,485,572,691.

The EFCC arraigned Idris before the FCT High Court on July 22, 2022.

He was arraigned alongside Godfrey Olusegun Akindele, Mohammed Kudu Usman, and Gezawa Commodity Market and Exchange Limited.

The Star