Court freezes oil marketer’s accounts over $5m fraud

FOR allegedly committing fraud of $4920 million, a Federal High Court on Wednesday ordered that the bank accounts of an oil marketer and businessman, Jyde Adelakun Aremu Buraimoh, domiciled in Polaris Bank Limited, formerly Skye Bank Plc, be frozen for a period of 60 days.

Also affected in the court order, are the businessman’s company’s accounts also domiciled with the bank.

TribuneOnline recalls that EFCC had dragged both the businessman and his company, Top Energy Company Limited, before the court on alleged fraud in a suit marked FHC/L/CS/586/18.

The EFCC had filed an ex-parte application before the court by praying that the defendant’s accounts be frozen.

The EFCC lawyer, Mr. George Chia-Yakua, while moving the application for the freezing of the businessman’s accounts with Polaris Bank Limited, told the court that the order been sought for is to last till the conclusion of the anti-graft agency’s investigation of petitions received from foreign banks on the alleged fraud against the businessman and his company.

Justice Ayo-Emmanuel, while delivering a ruling on the application, ordered that the businessman’s accounts be frozen for first 60 days, starting from today, after which the order will be extended should in case the investigation is yet to be concluded.

The EFCC in an affidavit in support of the Ex-parte application, deposed to by one of his investigators, Tosin Owobo, averred that his team of the Special Task Force were assigned to investigate a petition received against the Adelakun and his company and that upon analyzing the petition it was found worthy of Investigation.

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The deponent also averred that the World Pay LLC referred to as the petitioner is a global payment processing Technology and payment solutions Company based in the United States of America. Adding that the petitioner runs payment processing platform through which merchants and customers initiate and authorize fund transfers for payments, returns and refunds of goods and services.

Owobo also stated that the petitioner provides payment processing service under which the Adekakun’s company applied for and was granted access to a service which allows customers to authorize merchants to debit payments directly from their accounts, through the payments the petitioner provides.

He also averred that between August and September 2018, the second respondent produced payment authorizations from some purported customers to the petitioner and requested for the sums totalling about $29,000,000 (Twenty Nine Million United States Dollars). And that it was discovered that the customer’s accounts which authorized payments in favour of the Adelakun’s company did not exist.

The deponent further stated that the petitioner released about $12,000,000 to the Adelakun’s company account, by wiring the amounts in tranches to his account in Fifth Third Bank, United States of America. And when it was discovered that the monies transferred by the petitioner to Adelakun’s accounts in Fifth Third Bank had been further transferred to other accounts in other countries including Nigeria, Dubai, United Kingdom, South Africa and the United State of America.

And that pursuant to the complaint, the sum of $4,920,500 from the funds fraudulently obtained from the petitioner, was remitted unlawfully to Nigeria.

He further stated that Adelakun and his company, cleared and received these funds in Nigeria having knowledge that this is a proceeding of crime.

“In the course of the investigation, we traced and discovered that the accounts in former Skye Bank now Polaris Bank Limited, received the proceeds of crime from the petitioner, some of which are contained in the schedule attached to the ex-parte application,” Owobo averred.