The trial in absentia of Abdulrasheed Maina, former Chairman, Pension
Reform Task Force Team, (PRTFT) continued on Wednesday, November 25,
2020 before Justice Okong Abang of the Federal High Court, Abuja.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC is prosecuting Maina,
alongside his firm, Common Input Property and Investment Ltd on a
12-count charge of operating fictitious bank accounts, corruption, and
money laundering to the tune of N2 billion.

At today’s trial, counsel to Common Input Property and Investment Ltd
(the second defendant), Adeola Adegbite told the court of his intention
to disengage as the company’s counsel, but even though Prosecution
counsel, M.S. Abubakar, acknowledged the receipt of the defence
counsel’s disengagement application, dated November 25, 2020, and made
no objection to it, Justice Abang, ruled that Adegbite remained counsel
to the second defendant by the court records.

The testimonies against Maina, continued with that of the ninth
prosecution witness, (PW9), Rouqayyah Ibrahim, a principal investigation
officer with the EFCC in Anti Money Laundering and Combating Terrorism
Financing (AML CFT) unit of the Commission and member, Pension Fraud
Team, who stated that he knew Maina and Input Property Investment Ltd,
following the invitation of the EFCC in 2010, to join in the pension
verification exercise.

According to him, a payment mandate, bearing the names of several
individuals, totaling N94 million was discovered during the cause of the
verification, and that some of the pensioners’ names on the list were
fake, for which a report was made to the EFCC by the team, leading
eventually to the creation of the Pension Fraud Team.

The Pension Fraud Team, he said, wrote to about 30 banks, requesting the
bank accounts of Mr. Steven Oransanya as the Head of Service, in which
it turned out that Mr. Oransanya at that time, operated 66 illegal bank
accounts, unknown to the Accountant General.

“Our investigation revealed that there were five modus operandi that the
suspect whom we were investigating at that time was using to steal money
from the pension account. In total we were able to deduce that N14
billion was stolen from the pension account. In the five modus operandi
was payment to fake pensioners, non-existing contracts, illegal payment
to National Union of Pension NUP and illegal payment to another
association called Association of Retired Federal Civil Servants.

“We discovered that the suspect will often pay companies for
non-existing biometric contract and once the payment is made, they
withdraw cash and hand it over and likewise payment to the two
association of NUP and Association of Retired Federal Civil Servants.
They will withdraw the money cash and hand it over to the person who
asked them to supply the account.

“Once we concluded the investigation of those who were indicted, they
were charged to court, and some have been convicted,” the witness said.

According to him, Abdulrasheed Maina was part of those indicted and
charged before Justice I. Ekwo of the Federal High Court, Abuja, but
that he ran away for six years. And was arrested and charged before the
present court.

The PW9 revealed that Maina as chairman, PRTT was deeply involved in
stealing pension funds. One of the things discovered was the payment of
N133 million for a non-existing contract to Xanjhi Technology, a company
he appointed to computerize the pension payroll. The money was withdrawn
in cash, converted to dollars and handed over to Khalid Biu (PW5), a
staff of Fidelity Bank and handed over to Maina’s secretary, Ann Igwe
Oluchi, who is now standing trial at FCT High Court Gwagwalada. Xanjhi
Technology and its owner, Ahmed Mazangari are also standing trial for
inserting about 15 fake persons into the pension payroll which they were
engaged to computerize.

According to the witness, “We also discovered that Frederick Hamilton
Ltd, owned by Osa Afe, presently standing trial with Steven Oransanya
who received payment for a non-existing biometric contract handed over
about N250 million to Maina.

“Our investigation further revealed the existence of six accounts with
Fidelity Bank, out of the six, five were linked to Abdurrasheed Maina.
We discovered that there was nowhere in the accounts opening packages of
these accounts where the name, birthday or signatures of Abdurrasheed
Maina appeared. These account are: Nafisatu Aliyu Yeldu (PW4) Drew
Construction, also an account Kangolo Dynamic Cleaning Services Ltd,
Cluster Logistics Ltd, Fatima Aliyu, he also had a personal account in
his own name with Fidelity Bank, and also in the name of Dr. Abdullahi
Faizal.

“For example Nafisatu Aliyu Yeldu’s account bears the name of
Abdurrasheed Maina’s sister. It also bears her passport, photograph. On
the face of it, it appears the account belonged to her, but when we
invited her for investigation, we discovered she didn’t know anything
about the account, even though it contains her name and children but it
was not her signature. She informed us that she remembers at one point
that Toyin Meseke (PW2), who is a Fidelity Bank staff requested for her
PHCN (power utility) bill but she wasn’t sure what he wanted it for and
that was one of the document that was used in opening the account. She
also informed us that when she started receiving alerts, she contacted
Toyin Meseke and he promised to deal with the issue.”

The turnover in Yeldu’s account, the witness said, was over N300m.

The analysis of the identity used in the opening of Abdullahi Faizal’s
account, (one of the many variants of the name Maina used for his son
and himself) showed that it was forged, even as Meseke, the account
officer, confirmed that Maina had complete control over the account,
though his name, signature and photograph did not appear anywhere in the
account opening packages. The account had a turnover of about N1.5
billion within nine months from mostly cash deposits from unknown
sources.

“We called for the statement of Drew Construction and of his Fidelity
Bank, and discovered the same modus by Maina,  concealing and stealing
the identity of his family members, registering companies in their
names, opening corporate bank account without their knowledge.

“In the case of Drew Construction, it was the name of his other sister,
Fatima Abdullahi Aliyu.  When she was confronted, it showed that she had
no knowledge of the account, even though it bore her name and other
similar information that belonged to her. The turnover was about N55
million all from cash deposits within a few months.

“We also discovered from Common Input,  a company registered by Maina
and his wife, using the details of his sister (PW2), taking advantage of
his sister-in-law, Mairo Bashir (PW1), who deliberately allowed Maina to
conceal his identity without doing the ‘Know Your Customer’ and allowing
him to operate the accounts as Fatima Abdullahi. When Fatima was
invited, we confronted her that her BVN was linked to Common Input and
Kongolo Dynamic Cleaning Services Ltd and she confirmed that she did not
know about the existence of the company and that Maina requested her to
give her BVN so that she will be removed as a signatory from the company
and she wasn’t aware of being a signatory of any company but innocently
gave them the BVN, believing that will make her stop being a signatory
of the said company.

Justice Abang adjourned the matter till December 3, 2020 for the
continuation of trial.