Two Nigerians, Oluwagbewikeke Lewis, 35 years old and Bashiru Aderibigbe, 45 years, based in Ireland may face 14 years imprisonment if found guilty after they were arrested for laundering €183,000 (about N86.9 million).
Lewis and Aderibigbe who had their day in court on Wednesday pleaded guilty after they conspired and laundered the said amount in false Pandemic Unemployment Payments, or PUP, from the Department of Social Protection in their country of residence.
The money was said to have been laundered between April 2020 to December 2020. They also pleaded guilty to 11 counts of possession of forged passports, falsified bank statements, and stolen UK passports.
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According to reports, it was revealed on Wednesday at the Cork Circuit Criminal Court in Ireland that they had used stolen PPS numbers belonging to 74 HSE and Tusla employees.
The employees were targeted on the assumption that they would be working throughout the pandemic and would not be making a PUP claim.
Detective Eimear Keeshan of the National Economic Crime Bureau said they used the PPS numbers to activate fraudulent accounts in the country.
More than a hundred false applications for PUP were made, with a total of N84.1 million paid into 57 separate accounts.
The accounts, which contained N15.4 million, were frozen.
Further investigations found that N14.2 million was transferred to German banks, while the whereabouts of the remaining N56.9 million remain unknown.
The detectives found that the suspects regularly communicated on WhatsApp.
They also reported to the head of a Nigerian criminal organization, named “The Chairman” and “Ebony”. Oluwagbewikeke and Bashiru have been remanded in custody by Judge Helen Boyle to appear again next Wednesday.
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