EXCLUSIVE: George Uboh, Lamorde’s accuser, is currently facing criminal trial by EFCC

George Uboh, the man who petitioned the senate accusing EFCC chairman, Ibrahim Lamorde, of diverting N1 trillion worth of recovered loot, is currently being tried at an FCT high court by the anti-graft commission.

TheCable can also report that the allegations that Lamorde embezzled or diverted looted funds recovered from DSP Alamieyeseigha and Tafa Balogun were also levelled against his predecessor, Nuhu Ribadu, in 2009.

Uboh (pictured), who recycled the allegations, is currently being tried by the EFCC for criminal conversion of property belonging to the Police Equipment Fund (PEF).

He is due to open his defence on October 29.

According to the charge sheet seen by TheCable, Uboh is standing trial on three counts.

Count one reads: “That you, George Uboh, sometime in 2007 in Abuja, the judicial division of the high court of the Federal Capital Territory, being a servant in the employment of the Police Equipment Foundation, and in such capacity entrusted with certain property, to wit: six units of operational vehicles, did commit criminal breach of trust by selling one Toyota Hilux pick-up van through one Egbon Blessing, and thereby committed an offence punishable under section 314 of the penal code.”

The second count reads: “That you, George Uboh, sometime in 2007 in Abuja, the judicial division of the high court of the Federal Capital Territory, being a servant in the employment of the Police Equipment Foundation, and in such capacity entrusted with certain property, to wit: six units of operational vehicles, did commit criminal breach of trust by selling one Toyota Hilux pick-up vans to Muha Motors, and thereby committed an offence punishable under section 314 of the penal code.”

And the third count reads: “That you, George Uboh, sometime in 2007 in Abuja, the judicial division of the high court of the Federal Capital Territory, being a servant in the employment of the Police Equipment Foundation, and in such capacity entrusted with certain property, to wit: six units of operational vehicles, did commit criminal breach of trust by selling two units of Toyota Hilux pick-up vans, and therefore committed an offence punishable under section 314 of the penal code.”

The senate committee on ethics, privileges and public petitions has asked Lamorde to appear before it on Wednesday but TheCable understands that the EFCC boss may not honour the invitation.

The Saraki link

On Tuesday, Sahara Reporters, the whistle-blowing website, reported that Uboh is a convicted credit card fraudster who has been recruited by  Senate President Bukola Saraki to scandalise Lamorde because of the investigation of Saraki’s wife, Toyin, by the EFCC.

But a Saraki associate and chairman of the senate ad-hoc committee on media and publicity, Dino Melaye, has dismissed the report, describing it as “baseless and unfounded allegations”.

At the time the embezzlement allegations were first made in 2009, Ribadu had been hounded out of the EFCC and demoted from the rank of assistant inspector general to deputy commissioner of police by the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua.

He was later dismissed from the force for refusing to wear the DCP rank and he fled the country after an attempt was made on his life.

It was believed then that James Ibori, former governor of Delta state, and his political ally, Saraki — who was then governor of Kwara state — were behind Ribadu’s travails following EFCC investigations into their past.

Ibori and Saraki were very close to Yar’Adua and were believed to have nominated Mike Aondoakaa as attorney-general of the federation as part of a larger plot to frustrate Ribadu out of the EFCC and take control of the agency.

Farida Waziri was then appointed substantive chairperson of EFCC after Ribadu and Lamorde, who acted as chairman for five months in 2008, had been removed from the commission.

Aondoakaa initially sought to take over the prosecutorial powers of all anti-graft agencies but soon dropped the plan when Waziri was appointed, a development that effectively caged the EFCC.

A parallel is now being drawn between what happened to Ribadu under Yar’Adua and the alleged plot to get President Muhammadu Buhari to remove Lamorde as EFCC chairman.

Uboh, in his own petition submitted to the senate, alleged that when Lamorde was EFCC director of operations between 2003 and 2007, and acting chairman of the commission between 2007 and 2008, he “diverted” the recovered loot amounting to N1 trillion.

As in the allegations against Ribadu in 2009, the loot was said to have been recovered from Alamieyeseigha, former governor of Bayelsa state and ‎Balogun, former inspector-general of police.

The slight difference, however, is that in the allegations against Ribadu, he was further said to have “diverted” the proceeds from sale of the seized property of convicted fraudster, Emmanuel Nwude.

Nwude had pulled the biggest 419 in history when he duped a Brazilian of $242 million, from which he invested in Union Bank and became a director. He was eventually jailed following EFCC prosecution.

‘Smear Campaign’

Ribadu was later investigated by the house of representatives over these allegations, but the outcome was never made public as Yar’Adua died in the process and the then Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan became acting president in February 2010.

The then chairman of the house committee on police affairs, Abdul Ningi, had specifically requested that Mike Okiro, who was the inspector general of police, should provide details of “the amount of money recovered and the whereabouts of the money, the number of property recovered and the whereabouts of the property” recovered from Balogun.

There were allegations that Ribadu recovered N20 billion from Balogun but only remitted N2 billion and purportedly pocketed the balance.

The house investigation followed an EFCC report produced under Waziri who said she was not aware of where the proceeds of the sale of the forfeited property were lodged, but her allegations were described by Ribadu’s lawyers as a “smear campaign” and part of the fight-back by Ibori.

Ribadu’s lawyer, Charles Musa, wrote on April 5, 2010, in response to the allegations: “While it is easy to read into, and sympathize with, the extreme desperation that has led the EFCC into these bogus and orchestrated media campaign, Mr. Ribadu states categorically today, as he did late November 2008 when this same groundless rumour was advertised by these same forces, that, regarding Mr. DSP Alamieyeseigha, he DID NOT supervise the sale of any property with respect to the convicted former governor of Bayelsa State, Mr. DSP Alamieyeseigha.

“While it is true that the painstaking investigations, the conviction, and the recovery of all the proceeds of corruption from Mr. Alamieyeseigha were done during Mr. Ribadu’s tenure, the disposal of the property was actually done at the instance of Mrs. Farida Waziri, the new EFCC boss.

“Regarding Mr. Emmanuel Nwude: That whereas Mr. Ribadu supervised the investigation and prosecution of Mr. Nwude leading to his conviction in a court of law, neither he nor any EFCC staff had a hand in the disposal of his assets.

“It is a sad illustration of the collapse of competence at the EFCC that the agency could still speak of some ‘Emmanuel Nwude’s property’ knowing full well that these were proceeds of crime, and that a court of law actually gave a proper order of forfeiture against him.

“For the avoidance of doubt, the truth of the matter was that the court ordered the disposal of ‘Nwude’s property’ as restitution to the rightful owners of the stolen assets, and the disposal was handled by lawyers to the complainants who Mr. Nwude duped in the first place.

“The law firm is one of the leading firms of attorneys in this country who can be contacted for further reference if the EFCC has difficulties understanding the process of asset forfeiture. Again let it be known to the EFCC and its current cheer leaders that neither Mr. Ribadu nor the EFCC he headed had any hand in the asset disposal process.

“Regarding Mr. Tafa Balogun: Again as in the case of Mr. Nwude, a clear court order was obtained to recover the assets and the process of disposal was again handled by some of the leading estate firms in the country. Mr. Ribadu did not partake in the asset disposal process, and did not know a single individual who bought or acquired any of the property.

“Finally: Mr. Ribadu is naturally dismayed that an institution which, in its first four years of existence, garnered a lot of local and international esteem on account of its sterling reputation for dogged investigation and effective prosecution has putrefied to this current state where even basic reference records have become a challenge for the leadership of the agency.”

After winning the 2011 presidential election, Jonathan removed Waziri, who was never respected as an anti-graft czar, and replaced her with Lamorde.

Ibori was, meanwhile, tried and jailed by the British government acting mainly on information passed to its police by the EFCC, with Aondoakaa removed as attorney-general and Waziri less powerful after the death of Yar’Adua.

The plot thickens?

In the latest twist, however, the allegations against Ribadu have now been dug up, but levelled against Lamorde this time.

The EFCC had recently quizzed Saraki’s wife, leading to more leads in a money laundering investigation of the senate president based on a petition by the Kwara state chapter of the PDP.

TheCable confirmed that the anti-graft commission is in contact with the London metropolitan police — which played a key role in the imprisonment of Ibori — to help with the investigation of Saraki.

Uboh was tried in the US after its law enforcement agents carried out a major raid on a credit card and bank fraud ring led by him in Georgia in 1992. He came out of jail on January 16, 2001, according to information on the website of the US Federal Bureau of Prisons.

The petitioner, who currently runs a company called Panic Alert Security System (PASS), passed his petition through Peter Nwaoboshi, a first-term senator from Delta state who was reportedly given the PDP ticket in the 2015 election by Ibori — who still manages the politics of the state from his UK prison cell.

Ibori appointed Nwaoboshi into his cabinet when he was governor.