NSA pays Fayose N1.2bn in cash to disguise source, avoid traces  —Witness

NSA pays Fayose N1.2bn in cash to disguise source, avoid traces  —witness

Story from Uji A. ILIYASU 

A former Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) investigating officer, Abubakar Madaki,on Monday told a federal high court in Lagos that former National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki, paid former governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose N1.2bn in cash to disguise the source of the money given to him.

Madaki informed the trial judge, Justice Chukwujekwu Aneke, that during the anti-graft agency‘s investigations into the money laundering charge, it was discovered that the money was paid in cash to disguise the source of the funds and to avoid traces.

Recall that  former Minister of State for Defence, Senator Musiliu Obanikoro, had earlier told the Judge that he was instructed by Dasuki to transfer N1.2bn to Fayose from an account used as Boko Haram Special Intervention Account.

Obanikoro who testified as an EFCC witness in the ongoing trial of Fayose over an alleged N3.3bn fraud, claimed that the N1.2bn was initially transferred from the imprest account of the NSA into the particular intervention account.

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Madaki had also informed the court that contrary to the statement made to the commission by Fayose that the money was a campaign donation from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the EFCC discovered that the fund was from the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) and that it was budgeted for the purchase of security equipment.

The former governor, alongside his company, Spotless Investment Limited, faces an 11-count charge of criminal breach of trust, theft and stealing of public fund