The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), on Monday, arraigned a former Imo State Governor, Senator Rochas Okorocha, and six others before Justice Inyang Ekwo of the Federal High Court in Abuja, follwing their alleged involvement in 17-count charge of conspiracy, stealing, conversion of public funds and money laundering to the tune of N3.14billion.
Okorocha was arraigned alongside Anyim Nyerere (a.k.a Anyim Chinenye), Naphtali International Ltd, Perfect Finish Multi Projects Ltd, Consolid Projects Consulting Ltd, Pramif International Ltd and Legend World Concepts Ltd.
One of the counts read; “That you, Rochas Okorocha, Anyim Nyerere(a.k.a Anyim Nyerere Chinenye) and Naphtali International Ltd, on or about the 24th October, 2014, at Abuja within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court converted the sum of N900,000,000 property of Imo State Government of Nigeria transferred from the Imo State Government House Account, which you all reasonably ought to have known formed part of the proceeds of an unlawful act, to wit: stealing and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 15(2)(b) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act 2011, (as amended) and punishable under Section 15(3) of the Same Act.
Another count read: “That You, Rochas Okorocha, Anyim Nyerere(a.k.a Anyim Nyerere Chinenye), and Perfect Finish Multi Projects Ltd, on or about 28th August, 2014, at Abuja within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court converted the sum of N486,000,000(Four Hundred and Eighty Six Million Naira), property of Imo State Government of Nigeria, transferred from the Imo State Joint State Local government Project Account, which you all reasonably ought to have known formed part of the proceeds of an unlawful act, to wit: stealing and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 15(2)(b) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and punishable under Section 15(3) of the same Act”.
But when the charge was read to the defendants, they pleaded “not guilty” to the offence.
The prosecuting EFCC lawyer, G. K. Latona, later urged the court to set a trial date and remand Okorocha in a Correctional Centre.
But the defence team, including Oke Amaechi (SAN) for Okorocha and Daniel. M. Uzorumba for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 7th defendants, informed the court that they have filed applications for bail for all the defendants dated May 25, 2022.
Responding, Latona informed the court that he was served with a motion on notice of bail on May 26, 2022, saying that, “We intend to respond; there were issues raised there concerning the office of the Attorney General of the Federation, we want to respond to that.”
In his short prouncement over the matter, Justice Ekwo remanded all the defendants in EFCC’s custody and adjourned the case till Tuesday (tomorrow) for the hearing of the bail applications.
