"How Osun Speaker Owoeye was duped of N38m by fraudsters" - Witness

Police sergeant Adetunji Adejare has provided details of how the Speaker of the Osun State House of Assembly Speaker, Timothy Owoeye, was duped by fraudsters to the tune of N38 million. 

New Telegraph reports that the police officer who also served as a witness gave the account at a Federal High Court sitting in Osogbo, Osun state on Monday, June 17.

Adejare said with the aid of a telephone tracker, the eight persons implicated in the matter were arrested. They are: Kazeem Agbabiaka, AbdulRasheed Ojonla, Oyebode Femi, Babatunde Oluajo, Adebiyi Kehinde, Oyebamiji Oyeniyi, Ismaila Azeez and Awodunmola Kehinde.

He testified that the investigation took the police to Imesi-Ile in Ekiti State, as well as Lagos and Abuja, the nation’s capital.

The witness said investigation led officers to a shrine where the complainant was subjected to “inhuman treatment”.

The policeman told the court that the defendants explained the sharing formula of the ransom in their confessional statements.

He said: “The complainant submitted a petition bordering on advanced fee fraud (419), conspiracy and threat to life to the Osun State Police Command on July 10, last year. We started investigation with tracking of the phone number of the first, second, third and fifth defendants.

“We went to Oke-Imesi Ekiti, where the first defendant was arrested. He later led us to Ado-Ekiti, where the second respondent was arrested. We proceeded to Lagos State for the arrest of the third respondent, who had travelled to Abuja by flight. The Intelligent Response Team in Abuja eventually arrested him with a tracker.

“The first defendant claimed to have bought a Toyota Highlander Jeep and the second defendant confessed to have used his own share to purchase the same type of Jeep but had not been delivered to him.”

He added: “The motor dealer confessed that the fourth defendant, Babatunde Oluajo, paid him in US dollars for the two jeeps of the first and second defendants.”

The witness explained how the investigative team “recovered dollar and naira, unregistered Toyota Highlander Jeep, single-barrelled gun, cartridges and othner items in the home of the first, second, third and fourth defendants.”

He added that the sixth defendant “was arrested for his role in the threat to life of the complainant and the sending of his naked video to police Sergeant Arawole Jimoh, who volunteered a statement that led to the arrest of the seventh and eighth defendants who had been using the video to extort money from friends and associates of the complainant.”

The court adjourned the matter till July 1 for trial-within-trial.

Meanwhile, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) has reportedly launched an investigation into a N900 billion constituency project fund executed by senators and House of Representatives members.

The commission said 180 key projects in the 36 states at the rate of five per state would be investigated.

It said its plan is to “recover projects and contracts confirmed to have been inflated or in which contractors under-performed or did not perform at all.”