Federal High Court in Lagos on Tuesday
rejected an application by the wife of former President Goodluck
Jonathan, Patience, seeking to bar the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission from tampering with a sum of $15.591 frozen in four Skye Bank
accounts.
A ‘No Debit Order’ was placed on
the four bank accounts in July while probing Jonathan’s former Special
Assistant on Domestic Affairs, Waripamo-Owei Dudafa, for money
laundering.
The formal first lady, who had laid claim to the
money, filed a fundamental rights enforcement action against the EFCC,
Skye Bank, Dudafa and the four companies in whose names the accounts
were opened.
She is urging the court to order the EFCC to remove the ‘No Debit Order’ on the accounts and to release the $15.5m to her.
At the Tuesday’s proceedings in the case
before Justice Mohammed Idris, Patience’s lawyer, Mr. Ifedayo Adedipe
(SAN), made an oral application, urging the judge to restrain the EFCC
from tampering with the money pending the final determination of the
case.
But the EFCC lawyer, Mr. Rotimi Oyedepo,
opposed him, arguing that the four companies who owned the four bank
accounts had been convicted of money laundering by Justice Babs Kuewumi
of the same court.
“We pray the court to dismiss the application with a wave of hand. There
is an order of the court that has convicted the fourth to seventh
defendants for warehousing the proceeds of crime,” Oyedepo said.
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