Witness narrates how Sunrise official paid Agunloye N5.2m in $6bn Mambilla project ‘fraud’

A witness of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has narrated how multiple transfers were made in favour of Olu Agunloye, former minister of power and steel, by Jide Sotirin, an employee of Sunrise Power and Transmission Ltd.

The EFCC is prosecuting Agunloye over a $6 billion Mambilla hydropower contract.

The anti-graft agency said it traced some suspicious payments made by Sunrise Power and Transmission Ltd. to Agunloye’s bank accounts.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo also challenged Agunloye to tell Nigerians where he derived the authority to award a $6 billion contract to Sunrise for the Mambilla hydropower project in 2003.

On January 11, Agunloye was arraigned by the EFCC on a seven-count charge bordering on fraudulent award of contract and official corruption.

A statement by Dele Oyewale, spokesperson of the EFCC, said Adebayo Ilori, a compliance officer with Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB), gave evidence at the court session on Monday.

Led in evidence by Abba Mohammed, the prosecution counsel, the witness said GTB received a letter from the EFCC sometime in October 2022 requesting some information on the account opening package, statement of account, and certificate of identification of two customers – Agunloye and Sotirin.

“Upon receiving the letter, Wale Agunbiade, head of the unit, went ahead to generate the statement of account from the computer system of the bank,” the witness said.

“Upon receiving the account opening package and statement of account, we compared the information generated because the statement of account was generated from the bank’s application by imputing the customer’s details on the computer system and all the parameters requested, which was then printed out.

“Then the bank compared what was printed and what was on the system to ascertain the accuracy of documents.

“The bank further prepared a covering letter and certificate of identification with the requested documents, which was signed by Wale Agunbiade and then dispatched to the EFCC.”

Testifying further, the witness stated that Sotirin was the signatory to the account from which he transferred N5,221,000 to Agunloye, allegedly concerning the Mambila Power Project contract award.

Oyewale also said the witness established that Sotirin, on August 10, 2019, transferred N3,600,000 from his account to Agunloye.

The EFCC spokesperson added that on October 22, 2019, Sotirin transferred N500,000 to Agunloye and wired N1,121,000 to the same account on November 13, 2019.

“On exhibit EFCC (1b), the name of the account holder is Agunloye Olu, and it is a naira account. On 10 August 2019, there was a transfer credit of N3,600,000 from Sotirin Jide Abiodun in favour of Agunloye Olu,” the witness was quoted as saying.

“Also, on 22 October 2019, there was a credit transfer of N500,000 from Sotirin Jide Abiodun to Olu Agunloye, and on 13 Nov 2019, there was a credit transfer of N1,121,000 from Jide Sotirin Abiodun to Agunloye Olu.”