Ahead of today’s court appearance of Cecilia Ibru, former chief executive of Oceanic Bank Plc, federal investigators have asked that the bank freezes the account of Nanashettu Bedell, now a fugitive from the law, who is believed to be the conduit through which Mrs. Ibru allegedly laundered N30 billion of depositors’ savings. Mrs. Bedell, 51, also known as Nanashetu P. Abdulai, ran the high brow Nanshet Nigeria Limited, registered in Nigeria and New Jersey in the United States. The company supplies and retails luxury gift items such as flower vases, ceramic plates, steel trolleys, large aluminium and enamel pots and dishes. It has an annual sales turn-over of about N750 million. Mrs. Bedell, an aide to the former Oceanic Bank Managing Director, worked as a nanny for Mrs. Ibru’s children. Listed among the major clients of Nanshet are airlines, financial institutions, government agencies, hotels, insurance companies, telecommunication companies and individual customers preparing for parties and those needing gift items. Mrs. Bedell, currently in hiding in the United States, with her husband, Carlton, a computer hardware merchant, is wanted for the “offences of conspiracy, aiding and abetting and money laundering running into billions of naira,” according to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC. Femi Babafemi, the spokesperson of the EFCC told NEXT that investigators believe that Mrs. Bedell and her company, Nanshet Nigeria Limited, were used by the Oceanic bank management under Mrs. Ibru as fronts to loot funds from the bank. Recent depositions to the EFCC by Gbadamosi Mufutau, the chairman of Zarm Poultry and Feed Mill Industries Limited, and Robinson Ofomata, an assistant general manager in charge of the conglomerate sector of the corporate banking group of Oceanic Bank, show that shareholders and depositors funds were fraudulently diverted to the private account of Nanshet Nigeria Limited with the knowledge and permission of Mrs. Ibru. “Sometime in 2007, my account officer, one Mr. Obinna at corporate banking informed me that I would be assisted in buying some of the bank offer shares,” Mr. Mufutau said. The transaction which occurred in April 2007 subsequently saw Mr. Mufutau, who had been banking with Oceanic bank since 2006, getting money regularly in large instalments. “The bank credited my business account, Zarm Stores Limited, with the sum of one billion, five hundred and ninety million naira. Four days later in the same year 2007, the accounts officer, Mr. Obinna gave me a draft for the sum of N685 million to purchase the same oceanic bank shares,” Mr. Mufutau said. In effect, he received a total sum of N2.28 billion. Mr. Mufutau, who said all the while that, he never “at any time collected or applied for any facility from the bank” cooperated completely with his accounts officer and disbursed the money as requested. “My accounts officer instructed me to be issuing the cheques for the oceanic bank public offer in bits. Thus I issued 28 cheques ...totalling the sum of one billion, three hundred and seventy seven million, four hundred and twenty thousand naira in favour of Oceanic Bank offer shares.” Mr. Ofomata, an Oceanic Bank official corroborated this claim stating that “Mr. Mufutau informed me that there had been some high level discussions involving a client (Mr Mufutau), the MD (Cecilia Ibru) and Group head of CBG that the proceeds of the facility was to be used to assist the bank in the bank’s public offer. Nanshet, the nanny gets the rest “My account officer, Mr. Obinna asked me to stop issuing cheques for purchase of Oceanic Bank’s public offer, that I should transfer the balance of N875, 555, 144.00 to Nanshet Nigeria Limited,” Mr. Mufutau further claimed. The Zarm poultry proprietor said that at the time of the transaction, he did not know the owner of Nanshet Nigeria Limited until he “saw the NEXT publication of Tuesday 25, August 2009.” He said he dutifully complied with his account officer’s directive regarding the balance, “I transferred the balance of N872, 555, 154 to Nanshet because I believed that the instruction came from the Managing Director of the bank Mrs. Cecilia Ibru.” His Zarm Poultry was later declared by the Central Bank of Nigeria to be owing Oceanic Bank a non-performing loan of N8.4 billion, a claim he strongly denies. Mr. Ofomata also confirmed the payments to NANSHET when he claimed that “he (Mr. Mufutau) then informed me that all the proceeds were returned to the bank for that purpose and the balance to Nanshet Limited. He showed evidence of all these which the then account officer corroborated. From the explanation given by the client with respect to the N2.3 billion naira facility which was further corroborated by the account officer Obinna Okezie, the proceeds of the facility still came back to the bank vide cheques in favour of Oceanic Bank offer and Nanshet Limited,” he explained. Another N8. 5billion fraud “It was on 21st August 2009 that I happened to know something about any transactions on a facility of N8.5 billion naira being transacted with one of my company (MB enterprises) with account in Oceanic Bank. I don’t know the beneficiary of the N8.5 billion naira, only the vouchers without name that I saw in the print out of the statement,” Mr. Mufutau said while explaining that his account may have been used for sinister purposes. However, Mr. Ofomata thought the debts may be bank errors. “On MB enterprises which has a CP (Commercial Paper) of N8.5 billion running on it, its genesis dates back to August 08, 2007 when a CP of N4.5 billion was awarded on it. The then account officer has no history of this and believes that FINCON will have an answer to this. It is this CP that continued to accrue interest until October 2008 when the balance has now grown to over N5.4 billion,” he said. “It was also in October 2008 that another debit of over N2.65 billion was effected on the account. The client has also raised issues with this and FINCON was contacted who also offered that this would be reversed along with any accrued interest whatsoever. This has not been done.” The present situation Mr. Babafemi confirmed that Mr. Mufutau’s accounts were indeed used to launder money by the Oceanic Bank management. “What happened in that case was that the man’s (Gbadamosi Mufutau) accounts were used for some suspicious transactions. It is a case we are interested in and we are following up on it. Beyond his own usual business transactions, we are investigating the fact that his accounts were also used to transact some funny transactions. This is a typical case of money laundering. It is not only him; there were some other people in that category,” Mr. Babafemi said.
cecilia ibru’s nanny was N30 billion front
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December 1, 2009 12:12PM |
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