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A’Court upturns ‘unreasonable’ ruling of High Court, jails pension thief 6yrs with N23bn fine

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A’Court upturns ‘unreasonable’ ruling of High Court, jails pension thief 6yrs with N23bn fine

A former assistant director of the Federal Civil Service (FCS), Yakubu John Yusuf, who was earlier fined N750,000 for stealing N24 billion by a High Court of the Federal Territory, Abuja has been sentenced to six years in prison and asked to pay N22.9 billion fine by the Court of Appeal.

Justice Abubakar Talba of the High Court of the Federal Territory, Abuja, had in 2013 handed a two-year jail term to Yusuf with an option of N750,000 for stealing N24 billion of police pension fund.

Yusuf was tried on a 20-count charge in 2013 alongside four other officials who include Atiku Abubakar, a permanent secretary; Ahmed Wada, a director; Veronica Onyegbula, a cashier; and Sani Zira, an ICT officer.

He had then pleaded guilty to three of the counts and said that he betrayed trust and fraudulently converted N2 billion of the police pension for personal use.

However, after his guilty plea, Justice Talba, sentenced him to the maximum two years jail term for each of the three counts he pleaded guilty to but surprisingly gave him the option of avoiding jail with a fine of N250, 000.00 for each of the counts.

But unhappy with that ruling, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had dragged the matter to the Appeal Court praying it to set aside the ruling of the lower court presided over by Justice Talba.

Ruling on the matter on Wednesday, a three-man panel of the Court of Appeal headed by Justice Abdu Aboki, in a unanimous judgment, described the High Court’s sentence as unreasonable and substituted it with a total of six years’ imprisonment with an addition of N22.9 billion fine.

Justice Emmanuel Agim, who delivered the lead judgment of the court, held that “the sentences levied” by the High Court “are clearly light and lenient ones.”

The justice further held that this allowed “the convict, who had admitted misappropriating or stealing N24bn, the option to pay the sum of N250,000 per count of offence in lieu of serving a prison term of two years for the offence,” to enjoy the huge balance he had in his possession.

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According to Justice Agim, the “amount” of the sentences “is paltry, a pittance and unreasonably low and it was “disproportionate to the amount stolen and therefore can comfortably and quickly be paid by the convict from the humongous amount stolen.”

He added that with the sentence, the convict would be left with “a huge balance of the stolen funds in his possession and without really causing him any pain of punishment.”

 

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