By Jude-Ken Ojinnaka
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) first witness, Kola Oyeneyin, has narrated to the Special Offences Court sitting at Ikeja, Lagos how the Chief Executive Officer of Trust Group, Mr Taiwo Oluwadahunsola, was allegedly involved in defrauding their Cooperative N996,000,311.00.
While being led in evidence by EFCC counsel, Rotimi Oyedepo, (SAN), before Justice Olubunmi Abike- Fadipe, the witness revealed that the CEO colluded with another to commit the alleged fraud.
Recall that the EFCC had on Thursday, March 23, 2023, arraigned Oluwadahunsola and Adebola Adetayo alongside a company, Green Eagles Limited, on a 19-count charge bordering on conspiracy to steal, stealing, money laundering and issuance of dishonoured cheques to the tune of N996,000,311.00.
The duo pleaded ‘not guilty’ to all the counts charge.
According to witness Kola Oyeneyin; “Between March and August 2020 when we were just coming out from COVID, every quarter, our Cooperative try to see companies that we want to put funds together to invest in the business.
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“In the case of Green Eagles Limited, shortlisted by our team to consider investing in it, we did the typical due diligence that we do on companies that we sign off and invest in.
“We had meetings with the first and second defendants and visited sites that they supposedly owned, to prove that they run an agricultural entity in Nigeria.
“After this was done, as we normally do, we created a specific investment plan between our Cooperative and Green Eagles Limited.
“It was called Farm Estate Management, and the purpose was that in the first two years of our investments our capital which we will typically collate as a collective investment, from members, including retirees, who trust us with their money due to our integrity over the years, we presented to them this company that we will be investing in”.
The witness said total of the investment was N950 million, which, according to him, was paid in tranches following the agreement with the defendants in August 2020.
The witness told the court that due to the huge investment, the Cooperative had insisted that it was not going to be paying money directly to the company.
Oyeneyin said: “We appointed a trustee, FBN Quest Trustees, brought into the agreement, and our part of the agreement was to ensure that the funds were disbursed on time so that they can meet with the purported planting as they presented it to us so that they will be able to meet with the returns the following year”.
The witness posited that as difficult as it was to put the funds together, “we did, because we would rather not default on our side of the obligation”.
According Oyeneyin, “Following the investment, Between December 2020 and January 2021, we started to see online news, circulating that Green Eagles Limited’s directors who are the first and second defendants, were accused of defrauding countless retail investors, who had put in small money into their agro-wealth plan, and this caught the team’s attention”.
He told the court that he immediately called Taiwo, the CEO, who simply brushed it off that there was nothing like that, that only one person had an issue and that they were trying to sort it out in Port Harcourt.
The development, according to Oyeneyin, was just two months after the final disbursement, and “so we became uneasy immediately, and from that point, we started our investigation”.
“We spent January, and February rechecking everything about this company, and by the end of February, towards March we expected the first tranche of our investment paid in September, was due to us, and then we pay out to members.
“I made a surprise visit to their office in Maryland (Ikeja) where I met Adebola, to enquire about the first returns as agreed.
“It was at this point that it dawned on us that everything that we had been hearing about the company until that time, was about to be true because Adebola immediately said she was having high blood pressure and not feeling well, and that they wanted to defer for another three months to end of June”, he maintained.
The witness further informed the court that it was realized later that whenever the money was paid by FBN Quest Trustees to the vendors running into millions of naira for orders, the defendants would “go behind to collect the money from the vendors and cancel the orders.
“So, N950 million was diverted to something else that we don’t know.”
He added that it was later discovered that all the farms that they laid claim to in Kebbi, Adamawa, which the Cooperative team had also inspected, “didn’t belong to them”.
Oyeneyin maintained: “They had organized with locals in those places to showcase the farms as being their own, using the means to convince our team that they were legitimate enterprise.
The witness insisted that Green Eagles Limited defaulted in paying returns and issued cheques for payments that were never honoured.
Oyeneyin postulated: “Between that period and now, not one Naira has come back to our Cooperative out of the total sum that was given to them.
“There was nothing we didn’t do to try and check if there was any element of genuineness in this entity called Green Eagles or Taiwo or Adebola.
“This was premeditated, and they set out to receive money from innocent individuals, retail and corporate like us, with no intension at all to doing business”.
He further told the court that following the development, the Cooperative wrote a petition to the EFCC.
At this point, the prosecution applied to tender the said petition along with its attached documents, having been identified by the witness.
There was no objection from the defence counsel, Mr. O. Ajanaku.
Thereafter, the petition and the attached documents were admitted in evidence as Exhibit P1, P1a, and P1b.
The prosecution also tendered in evidence several documents including the agreement between all parties, several Performa invoices exchanged in the course of the transactions, and minutes of a meeting held with Green Eagles Limited on June 28, 2021.
The case was adjourned till December 13 and 14, 2023 for continuation of trial.