By law, detained Chairman
of Daar Communications Plc, High Chief Raymond Dokpesi and others are expected
to be released or charged to court within forty-eight hours.
New report states that the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, failed to free the Chairman of
Daar Communications Plc, High Chief Raymond Dokpesi, after meeting his bail
conditions.
One of the conditions was
for the media mogul to surrender his travel documents to the EFCC and produce
two directors in the Federal Civil Service as sureties, a condition he met earlier
today, according to his lawyers.
His lawyer, Mr. Mike
Ozekhome, said they were shocked to be told that the agency had secured a
holding warrant from a magistrate’s court to keep his client in detention after
perfecting his bail conditions.
“We got the two sureties
today (yesterday) and we were ready to meet all the bail conditions before the
EFCC told us they were able to get a holding charge warrant from a magistrate.”
The Senior Advocate of
Nigeria, SAN, said a magistrate has no powers to issue a holding charge
warrant.
He also said neither Chief
Dokpesi nor himself had been made aware of any charges yet.
“We are yet to know the
charges levelled against Chief Dokpesi and he himself has told me that no
charges were preferred against him,” he said.
Apart from Daar Communications boss, Chief Raymond Dokpesi; former
Minister of State for Finance, Bashir Yuguda and former Sokoto State Governor,
Attahiru Bafarawa, there were many other key suspects detained in EFCC cells in
connection with the $2
billion arms deal.
It was learnt that while
some of the suspects such as Shuaibu Salihu, who was Director of Finance in the
office of the National Security Adviser and 19 others had been in detention for
over a week, Dokpesi, Bafarawa and Yuguda joined the suspects only this week.
Mindful of the position of
the law, a top source in the commission said last night that the agency might
approach a court to seek an order to further detain the high profile suspects.
“The aim is to give them
time to speak out on why they received huge public funds from the Office of the
National Security Adviser, ONSA, and what such curious payments were meant for,
especially as the recipients are not security men or security contractors,” a
source said.
It was also gathered from
competent sources in the commission that some of the suspects had made very
useful statements to the operatives and were willing to refund the money said
to have been obtained by them from the ONSA.
They were said to have
admitted that the money was given to them for ‘security reasons’ but did not
explain what aspect of security work they did for the nation and who appointed
them for the roles.
The man at the centre of
paying out the amount to the detained beneficiaries, Sambo Dasuki, was
reportedly not willing to speak to the DSS operatives.
He was said to have
insisted that he would only speak in the presence of his legal team headed by a
former NBA president, who was making frantic efforts to reach him at press
time.
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