Tuesday, 25 September 2012

Ex-directors were Allocated 2m Finbank Shares Without Payment - Witness

 

Abba, who is the General Manager of Springboard Trust and Investment Ltd, made the allegation while testifying at the trial of Okey Nwosu, a former managing director of the bank.

Nwosu and three former directors of Finbank Plc, Dayo Famoroti, Danjuma Ocholi and Agnes Ebubedike, are being prosecuted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission at the Lagos High Court, Ikeja.

The directors were charged to court for allegedly stealing N10.9 billion belonging to the bank.

Reports say that the four defendants were arraigned on May 10, 2011 before Justice Lateefat Okunnu on a 26-count charge of stealing.

The witness, led in evidence by Mr Rotimi Jacobs (SAN), counsel to the commission, said Finbank had mandated his company to purchase the shares on its behalf.

He said:"The bank informed us that the shares were being bought on behalf of seven of its clients.

``The shares were purchased and paid for by the bank and were deposited with the Central Securities Clearance System.

 ``However, after the purchase, there was an instruction on Oct. 9, 2007 from the management of Finbank to transfer over two million units of the shares to some directors of the bank.

``After receiving the instruction, we transferred them to the various directors.''

 ``The directors did not pay the money directly to my company. It was Finbank that transferred money to us," Abba said.

The witness, however, failed to tender before the court evidence of payment from the directors who had received the shares.

Jacobs told the court that Abba's inability to produce the evidence of payments made by the directors showed that the payments were never made.

He alleged that the shares were bought by the bank and fraudulently allocated to the directors who had no record of paying for them.

The matter has been adjourned to Wednesday. 

 

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