$620,000 BRIBE SCAM: AGF returns casefile to police for further investigation

[MrVan]

Following what Police sources say are a wider dimension to investigations over the $620, 000 subsidy bribery scam involving erstwhile chairman of the Subsidy Probe Panel, Hon. Lawan Farouk, the office of the Attorney General of the federation which was given the investigation report by the Police about 2 months ago, has returned the case file for some grey areas to be cleared.

Consequently, there are indications that a quick end to the Farouk Lawan bribery saga may take longer than expected to be resolved as the grey areas expected to be cleared, would take more investigations and time  to clear, a situation described as 'unending investigation' by a Police source.

The source noted that the office of the AGF has already given fiat to private legal practitioner and a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Gboyega Awomolo to prosecute the case but that to make it water tight, there was need to secure the video recordings of the collection of the bribe money, which has been done with the SSS returning it to the AGF who handed same to the Police.

Aside the video clips however, the issue of getting the serial numbers of the dollars which were marked money is yet to be resolved as the source said the SSS has been foot-dragging on that aspect even after the Police wrote several letters requesting SSS to furnish it with the duplicate recordings of the marked money to assist their investigations.

Saturday Vanguard further leant that clarification is needed as to the controversy over the claim by Farouk Lawan that handed over the $620, 000 to Chairman of the Committee on Narcotics, Drugs and Financial Crimes, Hon. Adams Jagaba who has since denied collecting any such money from the embattled Farouk.

The reason according to the source, has to do with the fact that while Farouk wrote that he handed over the money to Jagaba at about 3 am in the early hours of the day at a venue, Jagaba countered that it could not have been possible as everybody knows, he takes his drugs by 3 am, would be fast asleep by then and couldn't have gone anywhere.

To clear this grey area, it was leant that the Police was asked to investigate Jagaba's medical records to determine if his defence is watertight.  Furthermore, the prosecution wants the photocopy of the complaint Femi Otedola made to the SSS which has not been handed to the Police.

There are the reasons why the case file was returned for further investigation even as it was observed that the embattled Lawan has continued to report to Force headquarters in fulfillment of his bail conditions.

The source disclosed that it is only when these grey areas are cleared that investigations will be deemed concluded and the charges can be filed in the law court.

Recall that Chief Femi Otedola had petitioned the IG of Police accusing Hon. Farouk Lawan of demanding the sum of $3million from him but collecting the sum of $620, 000, with a view to delete his company's name from the list of indicted fuel marketers.

Vanguard Nigeria