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.
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| Abdulrasheed Ahmadu Maigari, Saraki's Details Photo Credit: Sahara Reporters |
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.”
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| Ibbi George, A DSS Officer Arrested Photo Credit: Sahara Reporters |
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.
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