Patience Jonathan reveals how EFCC got guilty plea against ‘her’ companies

Another twist has been added to the arraignment of a former presidential aide, Waripomei Dudafa, alongside 2 others and four companies.

Former First Lady, Patience Jonathan, has accused the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, of presenting it’s agents in court as company representatives to plead guilty.

According to the Mrs Jonathan, the action of the EFCC was aimed to confiscating her money.

She, in a statement issued by her media aide, Yemi Akinbode, also denied that accounts were used for money laundering, alleging that the EFCC has been churning out tissues of lies, which she is constrained to respond to.

The statement read in part: “That Mrs. Patience Ibifaka Jonathan is laying claim to ownership of a whopping sum of $31.7 million dollars fund recovered by EFCC is a complete fallacy. Mrs. Jonathan does not own and has never owned such amount of money. The reason for this lie is best known to the EFCC.

“That another sum of $20 million dollars has been traced to Mrs. Patience Ibifaka Jonathan, is again, another falsehood aimed at hoodwinking the public against Mrs. Jonathan.

Read also: Dudafa, others plead not guilty for laundering Patience Jonathan’s $15m

“That a further sum of $5 million dollars has again being traced to another account of Mrs. Patience Jonathan. This is also a fallacy.

“That Mrs. Patience Jonathan opened accounts in the names of cooks, drivers and artisans. This is perhaps the biggest falsehood to the knowledge of EFCC.”

According the former First Lady, the authenticity of the representatives of the four companies who pleaded guilty to charges of money laundering were in doubt.

Quoting her lawyer, Gboyega Oyewole, the statement said Mrs Jonathan would appeal the validity of the representatives of Pluto Property and Investment Company Limited, Seagate Property Development and Investment Company Limited, Trans Ocean Property and Investment Company Limited and Avalon Global Property Development Company Limited.

Mrs Jonathan’s was also said to have alleged that the prosecution presented four unknown people as the companies’ representatives, all of whom did not show letters authorising them by their respective boards to represent them in the case.

“This is a clear evidence of the desperation of the prosecution to pull down the former First Lady and confiscate her hard-earned money,” the statement quoted Oyewole as saying.

Mrs Jonathan said: “This is an irony. I was the one who went to court for the repatriation of my confiscated money when I realised that the EFCC and its co-travelers were playing politics with this issue after I had come out publicly to say that the said money belongs to me and that I have all evidence to prove the sources of my money.

“Up till this very moment, EFCC has refused to interrogate or invite me for questioning, while the agency has continued to detain Dudafa under heavy armed security guards.

“The biggest twist in court on Thursday (yesterday) was that the fourth to seventh defendants pleaded guilty to all the 15-count charges. It is clear that these unknown faces were agents of the EFCC, who have been stage-managed and tutored to come to court to complicate the case as a strategy to confiscate my money”. she said.

By Timothy Enietan-Matthews….

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