Senator Bukola Saraki's aides on trial for stealing the lawmaker's money have revealed why they committed the act.
Bukola Saraki
Some of Senate President, Bukola Saraki's aides involved in the
November 20, 2015 theft of N310 million being transported to the senator
have disclosed why they stole the cash. The aides snatched the cash
from a bureau de change operator at 5 Nana Close, Maitama in Abuja.
Tracked down by SaharaReporters and speaking anonymously, some of
Mr. Saraki’s aides, who are currently on the run, said the senator was
in the habit of warehousing large volumes of cash, mainly for use as
bribes to judges, investigators and prosecutors to ensure the scuttling
of his trial for false assets declaration by the Code of Conduct
Tribunal (CCT).
The theft, first reported by SaharaReporters, featured five
officers of the Department of State Security (DSS) led by Abdulrasheed
Maigari, the most senior of the DSS officers attached to Senator
Saraki. Mr. Maigari hails from Dungo local government area of Taraba
State. The other DSS officers involved in the heist were Ibbi George
from Adamawa State, Patrick Ishaya from Plateau State, Peter Okoye from
Delta State, and Solomon Yunusa from Kogi State. Other participants
included four other aides of Mr. Saraki and five serving military
officers led by one Captain Hassan Mshelia.
The aides at large revealed to a correspondent of SaharaReporters
that Senator Saraki often used a house, 18 Lake Chad Crescent, Abuja, as
a warehouse for illegally acquired money. They said huge stashes of
cash from First Bank Plc. branch located at Coomasie House in Abuja were
often stored in the house. The aides added that the funds were then
moved on behalf of the Senate President for use in a variety of special
“political assignments” ordered by Mr. Saraki.
The sources said cash was regularly moved from the bank and the
house on Lake Chad Crescent to Mr. Saraki’s mansion at 5 Nana Close in
Maitama, from which lawyers as well as judges and their designated
representatives collect the cash to obstruct justice.
They said Mr. Saraki regularly used five of his official security
aides, supported by five soldiers usually chosen by Paul Ibok, his Chief
Security Officer, to move the funds. The aides disclosed to
SaharaReporters that, between October and November 2015, there were
three cash movements to No 5 Nana Close.
According to them, the cash was usually received by Mr. Saraki’s
Deputy Chief of Staff, Peter Makanjuola, who also has the duty of
distributing it to judicial officers with whom various deals had been
struck regarding plots to scuttle the Senate President's trial.
In one instance, the aides disclosed, N550 million was delivered to
Justice Alfa Belgore, a former Chief Justice of Nigeria, to carry out
an illicit assignment of obstructing justice on behalf of Mr. Saraki. On
another occasion, DSS officers working with soldiers took the sum of
N370 million to a venue. According to the wanted DSS operatives, the
Senate President had 23 DSS operatives attached to him. The DSS officers
are split into two teams (A and B), with both teams taking turns to
provide security for the Senate President, who lives in an eight-bedroom
official residence. The building, known as “White House,” shares a wall
with the official residence of the Inspector-General of Police.
Our sources said that, having observed the unrestricted movement of
large sums to Senator Saraki’s home, some of his DSS aides also
developed an appetite for cash. Thus, on November 20, 2015, an aide of
Mr. Saraki directed the leader of Team A, Ibrahim Shariff, to call Mr.
Maigari, who had been off duty, to return to work for a “special assignment”.
On his return, Mr. Maigari was told to join four colleagues and five
soldiers to go meet one Ibrahim Kabir, a First Bank employee, to pick up
money for the Senate President. They said Mr. Kabir happens to be the
account officer for Hassan Abubakar Dankani, Mr. Saraki’s favorite
bureau de change operator. One longtime associate stated that Mr. Saraki
had been using Mr. Dandani to launder funds since the senator’s days as
the governor of Kwara State.
Our sources said that, with the increasing scrutiny on him, Senator
Saraki had decided against using the DSS officers attached to him to
escort cash movement. Instead, the senator asked the management of the
bureau de change to make their own arrangement for security escorts to
move the cash to Senator Saraki's home.
However, with their own growing hunger for money, Senator Saraki's
security details had hatched a plot to corner the cash. And they
recruited other colleagues and Captain Mshelia. Dressed in military
fatigue, the security agents positioned themselves near the senator’s
home and ambushed the vehicle in which the bureau de change operator was
conveying the cash. SaharaReporters learnt that the security officers
told those moving the cash that they were under arrest for money
laundering. The police officers hired as escorts by the bureau de change
operator had to leave the scene when the DSS men showed their
identification tags, which gave the impression that they were on legal
duty.
Once the policemen had left, the DSS officers, including those
attached to Mr. Saraki, told the bureau de change operator that they
knew of the destination for the cash and that moving huge sums of cash
outside the banking system was illegal. The DSS officers then demanded
N350 million in order to allow the vehicle to proceed. After a period of
haggling, the officers settled for N310 million.
When Mr. Dankani was informed of the development, he phoned Senator
Saraki, who instructed him never to mention his name in connection with
the cash. Unaware that those who carried out the theft included members
of his security detail, Mr. Saraki thought he was safe from being
exposed.
Shortly after SaharaReporters reported the heist, disclosing that
the cash belonged to Mr. Saraki, the senator’s spokesman, Yusuf
Olaniyonu, issued a statement denying the senator’s ownership of the
stolen money.
“We want to say categorically that Dr. Saraki is not the owner
of the stolen money. He does not know the owner who is said to be a
bureau de change operator. The police that investigated the robbery
incident and the SSS, which issued a statement on it, can confirm that
there is no link between the Senate President with the ownership of the
money,” Mr. Olaniyonu claimed in a statement.
Mr. Olaniyonu also told SaharaReporters that the police had issued a
statement on the matter. But when SaharaReporters demanded where to
find the said police statement, he said we should check a ThisDay
report, which he claimed contained the police statement.
The paper quoted Wilson Inalegwu, Federal Capital Territory
Commissioner of Police, as saying: “In the course of the investigation,
we were able to get the names and identities of some of them (the
suspects). Unfortunately, two of the DSS operatives are attached to the
Senate President.”
Every step of the way, Mr. Saraki made valiant efforts, abetted by
the DSS boss, to prevent the money from being linked to him. Mr.
Dankani, the owner of the bureau de change, said the robbery took place
at 5 Nana Close, off Mississippi Road in Maitama and claimed that the
robbers dropped off his boys on the outskirts of Abuja. His version of
events, however, was disputed by Mr. Saraki's DSS aides, who told this
online newspaper that there was no need to have taken them, as there was
no confrontation between them and Mr. Dankani's boys. After taking the
cash, the aides said, they left for Maigari's house in Keffi, Nasarawa
State, where they shared the loot before returning to work with Mr.
Saraki.
Mr. Dankani also told SaharaReporters that he is a nephew of former
military head of state, General Abdulsalami Abubakar. Mr. Saraki’s DSS
aides disclosed to SaharaReporters that the ex-head of state and the
Senate President are very close friends, adding that they had
accompanied him numerous times on his visits to Abubakar at his Lake
Chad Crescent mansion.
Six days after the theft, both Mr. Maigari and Mr. Ibbi were
arrested around 8:30 pm, as they prepared to accompany Senator Saraki to
see President Muhammadu Buhari. After their arrest, the wanted aides
narrated, they requested to see the DSS Director-General (DG), Lawal
Daura, to explain why they stole the money. Mr. Daura declined the
request, but sent a DSS officer to tell them that the matter would be
resolved internally. He sent firm instructions through the officer that
the arrested officers should make statements, but ensure that such
statements should not link the stolen cash to Mr. Saraki in any way. As
such, the detained officers wrote choreographed statements dictated to
them by investigators.
Mr. Saraki's aides on the run disclosed that Mr. Daura and the
Senate President are intimate friends and that, on at least four
occasions, he secretly met with the senator after the latter’s
corruption trial had begun. The first of the clandestine meetings took
place at Barcelona Apartments in Abuja. On two other occasions, Mr.
Daura and Senator Saraki met at night at the Senate President's official
residence. SaharaReporters has constantly reported that the DSS boss,
Mr. Daura, was providing strategic support to the Senate President to
help him frustrate his trial.
A statement issued by the DSS on December 6, 2015 was carefully
tweaked to give the public the misleading impression that the stolen
cash belonged to the bureau de change operator. The statement also
failed to provide details of the purported robbery.
Signed by Tony Opuiyo, the DSS statement said: “The Department
of State Services (DSS) wishes to inform the general public that the
Service has arrested two (2) out of five (5) of its staff involved in
the robbery and sharing, on November 20th, 2015, of the sum of three
hundred and ten million naira (N310m) belonging to a Bureau De Change
operator in Abuja. While three (3) of the DSS staff are now at large,
the Military Authorities have commenced a detailed investigation of five
(5) of its personnel involved in the crime.”
It added that preliminary investigations revealed that Mr. Maigari conspired with four colleagues to steal the money.
Currently, only Mr. Maigari and Mr. Ibbi are in detention at Kuje
Prison, awaiting trial. The others are at large. Representatives of the
detained operatives said the DSS first charged them to court in April
2016, after media reports revealed that the money stolen belonged to Mr.
Saraki. They were charged to court for planning to demand their freedom
through the filing of a fundamental right enforcement suit in Abuja.
Mr. Saraki's security aides who remain on the run told
SaharaReporters that five soldiers are also in detention at Kuje Prison
in connection with the theft. In April, the police charged the soldiers
to court for robbery. But curiously, the soldiers are being tried
separately from the DSS officers because the DSS refused to hand over
Mr. Maigari and Mr. Ibbi to the police for prosecution, claiming it did
not trust the police.
Representatives of the detained DSS officers said they recently
discovered that Sunday Agaba, a man who accompanied them to steal and
was described as a bureau de change operator, is actually a retired Army
officer. He was shot by the police as they arrested him. When
SaharaReporters blew the lid on this, both Mr. Maigari and Mr. Ibbi were
removed from the underground cell where they had been kept and allowed
for the first time to meet with their respective families. It was during
such interactions that they realized they had been branded armed
robbers. They disclosed that if they were prosecuted along with the
soldiers, they would give the exact narration of the alleged robbery
incident.
SaharaReporters learnt that Mr. Dankani was listed as a witness in
the case. But on cross-examination in April, he claimed he was forced to
come for the trial. When SaharaReporters contacted Mr. Dankani shortly
before this report was written, he claimed to have a hazy recollection
of what went on with the bullion van on the day of the incident.
However, he insisted that the money stolen belonged to him.
The DSS operatives being prosecuted claimed that the stolen money
was recovered from them in full. However, the DSS told the court that it
recovered only N96 million.
The DSS operatives are due to appear again at the Federal Capital Territory High Court 18 when judges return from vacation.
Mr. Saraki too is on vacation with his entire family in Ibiza,
Spain. The theft of N310 million was not the only time Mr. Saraki’s
money laundering had provoked aides to steal from him. A group of aides
at his house in Ilorin recently stole cash worth N110 million from his
bedroom in Kwara State.
Source: Sahara Reporters
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