THE trial of suspended Accountant General of the Federation (AGF), Ahmed Idris, over an alleged N109 billion money laundering suit were stalled on Wednesday as a result of a missing statement made by AGF to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
The statement, said to be dated July 5, 2022, could neither be found in the court’s record nor in EFCC’s as well as the defence team’s.
The AGF and his co-defendants had been arraigned before Justice O. A. Adeyemi-Ajayi, but later re-arraigned last October before another judge, Justice Halilu Yusuf.
The defendants, Idris and three others; Godfrey Olusegun Akindele, Mohammed Usman and Gezawa Commodity Market and Exchange Limited; are being tried at the FCT High Court
But Wednesday’s proceedings could not go on due to a missing statement that was made by Mr Idris to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in the course of investigation.
The missing statement came to light when the EFCC presented one of its witnesses, Hayatudeen Suleiman, for examination of 13 statements said to have been extracted from Idris.
However, the proceedings were stalled when it was discovered that a statement dated 5 July 2022, said to be a core evidence in the trial was missing.
The issue became compounded when the EFCC could also not find the statement in its own case file, a situation which led to Idris’ counsel, Chris Uche, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) to tell the court that the missing statement did not form part of the prosecution’s statements that were served him.
Uche therefore accused the EFCC of suppressing some documents, which the missing one might be part of. He said: “We came fully prepared for this case to be substantially dealt with but unfortunately, EFCC appears to be dragging us back by not putting its house in order.
“If it were a civil matter, I would have asked for a cost of N5 million for our precious time wasted by the prosecution,” Uche said.
Subsequently, the EFCC lawyer, sought an adjournment to enable him to search for the missing statement and serve it on the defendant as required by law.
Acceding to the request, the judge adjourned the case until May 11, 2023 for the continuation of trial-within-trial.
