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Money laundering: Ex-Lagos speaker, Ikuforiji knows fate June 3
Justice Mohammed Liman of the Federal High Court, Lagos, on Friday reserved judgment in the trial of former Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Adeyemi Ikuforiji, till June 3.
The judge gave the date after prosecution and defence counsel adopted their written addresses during a virtual court hearing.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) arraigned Ikuforiji alongside his former Personal Assistant, Oyebode Atoyebi, on a 54-count charge of money laundering to the tune of N338.8 million.
The commission alleged that the defendants accepted cash payments above the threshold set by the Money Laundering Act.
The EFCC also accused the duo of conspiring to illegally accept cash payments in the aggregate sum of N338.8 million from Lagos State House of Assembly.
They, however, pleaded not guilty before Justice Liman allowed them to continue on bail granted them in 2012 when they were first arraigned.
The defendants were first arraigned on March 1, 2012 before Justice Okechukwu Okeke on a 20-count charge of fund misappropriation and money laundering.
READ ALSO: Trial of former Lagos Speaker, Ikuforiji, for alleged money laundering stalls
They pleaded not guilty to the charges and were granted bail by Okeke.
The defendants were later re-arraigned before Justice Ibrahim Buba following the re-assignment of the case.
Buba granted them bail in the sum of N500 million each with two sureties in like sum.
The judge on September 26, 2014, discharged Ikuforiji and his aide after upholding their no-case submissions.
He held that EFCC failed to establish a prima-facie case against them.
Dissatisfied with the judgment, EFCC through its counsel, Mr. Godwin Obla (SAN), filed an appeal dated September 30, 2014.
Obla argued that the court erred in law when it held that the counts were incompetent because they were filed under Section 1(a) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2004, which was repealed by an Act of 2011.
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