Nigeria: Money Laundering - ICPC Steps Up Probe of Abia
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This Day (Lagos)
9 October 2008
Posted to the web 9 October 2008
Davidson Iriekpen
Lagos
The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) has stepped up investigations into money laundering allegations brought against the Governor of Abia State, Chief Theodore Orji.
The ICPC had last month invited and detained the Accountant General of the state, Mrs. Bridget Onyema, for two days and later granted her administrative bail.
The arrest was in connection with a series of petitions sent to the commission on vast sums of money totalling N1.9632 billion million, transferred under the guise of travel estacodes for the governor, his deputy, their wives and families, as well as 23 other persons who swelled the governor's entourage to the World Igbo Congress held in Tampa Bay, Florida, USA, September.
The recent arrest and release of Abia State schedule officer in charge of external transactions, Mr Charles Agbara, it was learnt, was in connection with Mrs. Onyema's inability to produce the formal approval for basing estacode calculations for the governor, his wife and children, the deputy governor, his wife, children as well as their family members.
The petition among other claims is calling the attention of the commission to what it described as a high-level scam perpetrated by the Orji administration in the award of a contract for the construction of Abia Refinery to a non-existent US company for $100 million.
Also a socio-political group, the Abia Elders Forum, has called on the state government to respond to a claim by an Internet news service, which reported that a Memorandum of Understa-nding (MoU) was signed between a delegation of Abia State officials led by the governor and a group known as Nevada Petroleum Resources, Inc. in Tampa Bay, Florida early September 2008.
The Abia Elders Forum said it was curious that while the NNPC was building three new refineries at the cost of N800 billion, the Abia State Government claims, it was constructing a 20,000-barrel capacity refinery at $100 million.
According to the Forum, "Can the Abia State Government show evidence of a refinery licence from the Department of Petroleum Resources as is the case with other state governments? Abians also want to know at what stage the refinery project currently stands."
ICPC's Resident Consultant, Media and Events, Mr. Folu Olamiti, had earlier said it was true that the commission arrested Onyema.
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"I can confirm to you that Mrs. Onyema, the Abia State Accountant-General, was arrested by the commission and after her interrogation, she was asked to go and be reporting to the commission," he said.
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