Oil marketers sentenced to 8 years in prison

Justice Latifat Okunnu of the State High Court sitting in Ikeja, Lagos, has convicted and sentenced three oil marketers – Adamu Maula, George Ogbonna and Emmanuel Morah on a 26-count amended charge of conspiracy, obtaining by false pretence and forgery to the tune of N789.6million.

The charges were preferred against them by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.

Maula and his co-convicts were prosecuted alongside their firms, Downstream Energy Sources Limited and Rocky Energy Limited.

The convicts was said to have imported 10, 862 metric tonnes of Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, for which they were paid the sum of money by the Petroleum Support Fund, PSF.

However, EFCC, investigation revealed that the documents used were forged.

Counsels to the defendants, in a separate no-case submissions, had urged the court to dismiss the charge against their clients for lack of merit.

However, in the course of the trial, the prosecution counsel, Rotimi Jacobs, SAN, presented 11 witnesses, including Abdulrasheed Bawa, an investigator with the EFCC, and tendered documents in evidence.

In his judgment on January 26, Justice Okunnu sentenced the defendants to eight years imprisonment each.

The judge also ordered the convicts to return the money they fraudulently collected to the Federal Government.

Their companies were, however, discharged and acquitted by the court.

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