He has given the
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public petition, Ayo
Akinyelure, seven days to retract his comments linking him (Mr Elumelu) to the
fraud.
Lawyers to the banker,
in a letter, threatened to sue the lawmaker should he fail to retract the
statement and publicly apologise to Mr Elumelu over the fraud allegation.
THE ALLEGATION
The committee last
Tuesday alleged that UBA defrauded NITEL of about N41 billion from N42 billion
that liquidators of the telecommunications company deposited there after being
sold to MTEL. The allegation was made on the grounds of petitions forwarded to
it to that effect by J .U Ayogu and Co, on behalf of NITEL/MTEL .
Mr Akinyelure told
journalists that UBA made unauthorised withdrawals from the accounts of the
liquidated telecommunications companies four times and technically stole N41
billion out of the N42 billion that liquidators of the firm deposited there .
As stated in the
petition, he said, UBA withdrew N29 billion , N11 billion, N6.8 million and N22
million at different times between 2006 and 2015 from the accounts without
relevant tickets or authorisations for that purpose. And liquidators of the
firm explained further in the petition that officials of UBA have been hiding
under a litigated N685 million it withdrew from the accounts.
“A human rights
lawyer had sent a petition on behalf of the liquidators and creditors of NITEL
and MTEL, that if the N685million is a subject of litigation, there is a third
account meant for taxation and disasters which has N169million. It was also
unilaterally withdrawn by the UBA. Seven years after the withdrawal, they’ve
not provided the tickets, instead, they were asking the liquidators to get the
tickets from the dead liquidators, which is wrong. They had yet to provide the
tickets.
“In another account
which had N29 billion, UBA also unilaterally withdrew the money from NITEL
accounts without authorisation tickets. Most of the creditors of NITEL have
sued the liquidators that they’ve collected money from the UBA without paying
them. There is another MTEL account N11 billion withdrawn by the UBA and it has
not been accounted for till today.
“The creditors don’t
have money to go to court because they are already bankrupt. They sued UBA over
the N685million and they won at the Federal High Court, Appeal Court and the
Supreme Court. Up till today, they didn’t respect the court judgement by not paying
the liquidators.”
The lawmaker added
that when the Senate wrote the UBA management, they responded that the matter
was in court. This is even as he insisted the matter is not subjudice.
The UBA Group
Managing Director, Kennedy Uzoka , was thereafter invited to appear before the
committee on Wednesday, August 5.
THE RESPONSE
Mr Elumelu’s
lawyers, Lawal Rabana and Oluwakemi Balogun, described the allegation as false,
baseless, and mischievous as neither him nor any of the organisations
associated with him has ever been involved in or indicted for any fraud as was
falsely alleged by Mr Akinyelure.
They maintained that
the case is subjudice and rejected Mr Akinyelure’s “attempt to use the platform
of the respected institution of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria
to accomplish whatever ulterior motives he may have.
“It is important to
emphasise that when UBA appeared before the Senate Committee on Ethics,
Privileges and Public Petitions, attention was drawn to the fact that the facts
and circumstances leading to the disputes on the alleged financial indebtedness
was pending before the Supreme Court in SC/CV/112/2020. It was resolved that
given the pendency of the matter at the Supreme Court, it was subjudice and all
actions on the matter be suspended.
“It is shocking and
sacrilegious that a matter pending at the Apex Court could be subjected to
debate contrary to the Rules of the Senate and by extension, the principle of
law that when a matter is subjudice, it should not be subjected to debate
before a decision is reached by the Court. Therefore, the publications ascribed
to Senator Ayo Akinyelure is in total disregard of the Rules of Senate and the
Rule of Law,” part of the letter read.
The lawyers demanded
an immediate open, public and unreserved retraction of the statements by Mr
Akinyelure and an apology.
“Our Client has
instructed us to and we have demanded an immediate open, public and unreserved
retraction of the said statements credited to Senator Akinyelure and an apology
from Senator Akinyelure for this false allegation and defamation of our Client.
“We have our
Client’s further instructions to take all appropriate legal actions against
Senator Akinyelure and his media agents if our above stated demand is not met
within Seven (7) days of their receipt of our demand letter.”
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