$2.6m Fraud: Supreme Court affirms 10 year sentence against fraudster

The war against graft in Nigeria has received yet another boost with the decision of the Supreme Court to affirm a 16 year jail sentence passed on a fraudster.

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The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC had in 2004 arraigned the fraudster, Mike Amadi on a five count charge and was convicted and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment on March 30,2005 by Hon. Justice Morenike Obadina of the Lagos High court, Ikeja.

The landmark judgment which is the first EFCC case to get to the Supreme Court has opened a new vista in the prosecution of financial and economic crimes in the country. The judgment which was delivered by Justices Christopher Chukwuma- Eneh, Mahmud Mohammed, Aloma M. Mukhtar and others of the Supreme Court on Friday 19 December, 2008 in Abuja upheld the decision of the Lagos High court and that of the Appeal court in sentencing Amadi to a 10 year jail term.

The case between Mike Amadi and the Federal Republic of Nigeria was first heard at the Lagos High court and the Court of Appeal respectively. Amadi who was arraigned on a five-count charge of obtaining by false pretence, forgery and uttering of forged documents was earlier convicted in three counts but appealed to the appeal court where his case was dismissed. Thereafter, he went to the Supreme Court.

The accused was said to have sometime in February 2004, at No 15 Irepodun Street, Akiode, Ogba Lagos with the intent to defraud attempted to obtain the sum of one hundred and twenty- five thousand United States dollars ($125,000) from Fabio Fajans, by sending a payment schedule containing false pretence with a request for money to enable him process the transfer of two million ,five hundred thousand United State Dollars ($2.5million USD) being the contract sum for generators Fabio Fajans purportedly supplied to the Federal Government for the All African Games 2003, .He was also accused of falsely representing to the said Fabio Fajans that the said sum of $125,000 represents the five percent (5%) processing fees of the total contract sum of USD2.5 million.

Amadi was further said to have on or about the 6 th day of January 2004, with the intention to defraud and in order to facilitate his plan to obtain by false pretence from Fabio Fajans , forged a Central Bank of Nigeria International Payment Schedule purported to have been issued by the Central Bank of Nigeria.

All the offences were committed contrary to Sections 5 (1) ,8 (b) 1 (3)of the Advance Fee Fraud and other Fraud Related Offences Act Cap A6 Vol 1,Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004 and Section 467 (2) (2) of the Criminal code Cap C17 Vol 2 Laws of the Lagos State of Nigeria 2003.

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While reviewing the appeal, the Supreme Court judges concurred with the learned judges of the Appeal Court that the appeal was unmeritorious and should be dismissed. They contended that appellant’s arguments that before a conviction can be sustained for offence of attempt to obtain by false pretences, there must be a fraudulent pretence contained in a document from an accused to another identifiable person was untenable as Sections 1, 5(1), and 8 of the Advance Fee Fraud and other Fraud Related Offences Act No 62 of 1999 proved the charges against the appellant. Furthermore, they pointed out the admissibility of the appellant’s statement, which accepted that the prosecution (EFCC) took his phone, computer printer etc in which were found incriminating materials.

On the appellant’s submission that the presence of proper parties have not been met because according to Section 211 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, only the Attorney General of the State or an officer of his department, has the power to institute and undertake criminal proceedings against a person before any court of law in Nigeria, the Supreme Court judges concurred with respondent’ s counsel that Nigeria is a Federation and that the Attorney General’s power under Section 174 and 211 cannot be questioned by even the courts. They contended that because Nigeria operates a cooperative federalism some agencies such as the EFCC are common for both federal and state governments. In fact, Justice Mukhtar has this to say; “Indeed, the EFCC is a common agency for both the Federal and State economic and financial crimes, and as such it qualifies as any other authority to institute criminal proceedings under Section 211 (1) (b) of the 1999 Constitution.”

Finally, the trial judges in their separate judgments stated, “the findings of facts which are now concurrent are neither perverse nor unsupported by evidence. The law is trite that no appellant court will have no justification to upturn judgments that are the products of admissible evidence and based on reasonable conclusions.”

The case was thereafter, dismissed and the judgments of the trial and the appeal courts affirmed.