A principal witness, Abubakar Aliyu Madaki, on Wednesday and Thursday, September 25 and 26, 2019, gave vivid account of how a former director-general of National Broadcasting Commission NBC, Emeka Mba and four others, fraudulently transferred N2.9billion (Two Billion, Nine Hundred Million Naira) belonging to the Commission to different private bank accounts before Justice Mojisola Giwa-Ogunbanjo of the Federal High Court, Abuja.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, is prosecuting Emeka Mba alongside Patrick Areh,(former NBC director of finance), Basil Udotai (alleged owner of Technology Advisor), Babatunji Amure (alleged owner of Divine Partners and fourth defendant) and Technology Advisors, a company for alleged criminal diversion and stealing of NBC’s funds to the tune of N2.9billion (Two Billion, Nine Hundred Million Naira), meant for the purchase of setup boxes for a switch-over from the current analogue to digital system of broadcasting in the country.
Madaki, who appeared as the 13 prosecution witness tendered a total of 16 documents as exhibits, unearthed in the cause of investigating the fraudulent transactions.
The prosecution counsel, Chile Okoroma, boosted the exhibits by tendering their Certified True Copies, (CTC) in court. Madaki revealed to the court that in 2015, the first and second defendants (Emeka Mba and Areh) made an inflated fixed deposit of the sum of N13.890billion, as collateral with Zenith Bank to enable them to offset the liabilities accruing from the execution of the digital setup boxes.
“We discovered that the entire sets of boxes were to cost N9billion and some fractions, however for reasons best known to the first and second defendant, N13.890 billion was paid to Zenith Bank,” he added.
He disclosed that on September 10, 2015, the first and second defendants issued a mandated order to the bank to move the funds to other accounts without reference to the first letter of claims of the collateral.