ADAM Nuru, the Chief Executive Officer of First City Monument Bank (FCMB), says the alleged N573 million found in the account of Emmanuel Omale, the founder of Divine Hand of God Prophetic Ministries was wrongly posted.
Nuru said this on Thursday while giving evidence at the Presidential Investigative Panel probing Ibrahim Magu, the suspended acting chairman of Economic Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
“After that report, we conducted an investigation and discovered that the lodgement which we reported to NFIU was an error,” Nuru said.
He narrated that the error occurred during the migration of their financial application from Pinnacle-7 to Pinnacle-10.
“The error was as a result of the fact that we were using a bank application called Pinnacle-7. However, we migrated from that application to a newer version called Pinnacle-10,” he explained.
“Usually, when the bank intends to migrate from one application to another, we utilise weekends to carry out the exercise. The migration involves moving all the balances of customers from the previous application to the new application. The account of the Divine Hand Ministries was moved during that migration.
“In that branch, we have 983 accounts (Banex). The credit balance in all the 983 accounts domiciled came to the aforesaid amount. It was that balance of N573 million that was wrongly posted as an inflow into Divine Hand Ministries as reported to NFIU,” Nuru added.
Magu is under probe for alleged embezzlement and mismanagement of recovered assets under his watch as the acting EFCC chairman.
In his defence, Magu said the allegations levied against him by the Ayo Salami led Presidential Committee and Abubakar Malami, the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, were false, calling them attempts to bring set back to the feats achieved by the EFCC during his time as the acting Chairman.
He challenged Malami and the Presidential Committee to provide evidence that he mismanaged and looted fund belonging to the commission.
I unequivocally deny this allegation as same is untrue and merely calculated to tarnish my name, the Commission, and the giant strides this administration has achieved in the fight against corruption and recovery of proceeds of unlawful activities,” Magu said.
A report by the Presidential Investigation Committee probing corruption allegations him had earlier indicted him of acquiring a property worth N573 million in Dubai, United Arab Emirates through an unknown pastor.
The Committee which produced the report, according to The PUNCH was different from the one headed by Justice Ayo Salami, former President of Court of Appeal which is currently investigating Magu.
It was titled “Final Report of the Presidential Investigation Committee on the EFCC Federal Government Recovered Assets and Finances from May 2015 to May 2020,” published by the Federal Government-owned News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), The PUNCH reported.
Lukman Abolade is an Investigative reporter with The ICIR. Reach out to him via [email protected], on twitter @AboladeLAA and FB @Correction94