Kemisola Oye
THE Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) earlier today (Thursday 7 November 2024) continued with its second prosecution witness (PW2), Adesola Adeyinka, Founder and the CEO of Credit PRO Business Support Limited, the nominal complainant in the case against a couple, Ruth Idowu and Oriyomi Idowu, who are being prosecuted before Justice Mojisola Dada of a Special Offences Court sitting in Ikeja, Lagos over an alleged Two Billion, Seven Hundred Million Naira (N2.700,000,000.00) fraud.
The defendants are facing 20-count charges bordering on obtaining money by false pretence, money laundering, stealing, retention of stolen property and forgery to the tune of Two Billion, Seven Hundred and Fifty-Seven Million, One Hundred and Eighty-Eight Thousand Naira (N2,757,188,000.00) only.
They were arraigned on Tuesday, 28 November 2023 by the Lagos Zonal Directorate of the EFCC alongside Food Commodity Processing Enterprise, Bonway Food Processing Company Limited, Samee Idowu Company Limited and Farmex Integrated Companies Limited, which all belong to Ruth Idowu.
Count one reads: “Ruth Sameeha Idowu (a.k.a. Loiry Ventures), Oriyomi Kabeer Idowu (a.k.a. Yocli Ventures Food Commodity Processing Enterprise, Bonway Food Processing Company Ltd., Samee Idowu Company Limited, Farmex Integrated Companies Limited, between 31st of March 2022 and 17th of May 2023 in Lagos, within the jurisdiction of this honourable court, conspired amongst yourselves by a false pretence that you had a genuine Local Purchase Order (LPO) from various vendors and with intent to defraud, obtained from Creditpro Business Support Services Ltd the sum of Two Billion, Seven Hundred and Fifty-Seven Million, One Hundred and Eighty-Eight Thousand Naira (N2,757,188,000.00) only”.
Another count reads: “Ruth Sameeha Idowu (a.k.a. Loiry Ventures), Oriyomi Kabeer Idowu (a.k.a. Yocli Ventures Food Commodity Processing Enterprise), Bonway Food Processing Company Ltd, Samee Idowu Company Limited, Farmex Integrated Companies Limited, sometime in 2023 in Lagos, within the jurisdiction of this honourable court, converted the sum of N10,000,000 to purchase a GLK Benz, purchase sum derived from converting the sum of N500,000,000 belonging to Creditpro Business Support Services with the aim of disguising the illegal origin of the funds.”
At today’s proceedings, Adeyinka narrated to the court that they did not know that they were dealing with a fake company.
Led in evidence by the prosecution counsel, Zeenat Atiku, showed him exhibits p1 to p13.
The PW2 said: “Exhibit p1 is an email address, it was emailed after we had our last meeting after we confronted them with the facts and things admitted that we resolved amicably, part of the decision reached was that we should stop interest in accruing balance, we agree that the balance N526, 340,333 and we agreed that it will be paid within the period of 6 months with the repayment not less than N50 million. I sent this mail personally to Mr. Oriyomi Idowu, Ruth Idowu and my team members, Mr. Oriyomi replied by saying “duly noted”.
“Exhibit p2 is credit-pro; it’s part of the process that payment should go to BUA; at the beginning, Mrs Ruth agreed but said it is not advisable that we should pay to one of the marketing partners’ food commodity, and we don’t have reasons to doubts her. Each time payment was made, we sent an e-mail to confirm payments. We later got to know that this was done to mislead us in these transactions.
“Mrs Ruth Appiah Idowu gave us the contact of the person; we later realised that they were not real as they were created to mislead us to think that the fake Po’s were real.
“Exhibit p9 sent to us by Mrs Ruth Idowu, we confirm this Po’s as usual and sent to the address given to us by Ruth, upon confirmation we finance it because we believe it’s real”.
The witness said his company paid into the Access Bank account between March to June 2022. “We paid to Access Bank (account) between March and June 2022 because we wanted to mitigate against diversion; we wanted the money to go to BUA’s account directly. We later got to know that the food commodity belongs to Mrs Ruth Idowu”.
The witness confirmed Exhibit p12 as a WhatsApp transcript, “this contains the WhatsApp transcript between our company, Loiry Ventures rug and the various companies we were supplying. The WhatsApp groups were created for each company to facilitate smooth transactions. We later discovered that the supposed contact person actually belonged to Ruth Idowu; she was the one talking to us asking for sugar under the guise that it was their representative. We only got to know after the issue came up when we checked the true caller, and her name came up on all the numbers. We thought we were dealing with real companies only to realise they are clone companies, and we deal with lorry Ventures with utmost sincerity,” he said.
The counsel for the first, third, fourth, fifth and sixth defendants, James Alara and counsel for the second defendant, Babatunde Ogala (SAN), prayed to the court for an adjournment for their cross-examination.
After the testimonies of PW2, Justice Dada adjourned the matter till 20, 21, 22, and 23 January 2025 for cross-examination.
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