He said a special taskforce was set up and commenced investigation. It requested information on financial transactions of the companies involved from various financial institutions, including Fidelity and Heritage Banks.
He disclosed that from the responses the team received, they discovered “that Starline Consulting Services Limited received more than N10bn from
NDDC and payments were made to various individuals and organizations, with the second and third defendants as beneficiaries.”
“We discovered that the second defendant received N320m from Starline while the third defendant received N80m”.
The witness disclosed that though there were documents indicating that the second defendant was part of the contract execution, this was not established by the investigation as some of the companies interviewed confirmed that the second and third defendants were not part of the contract.
On the relationship between the 1st defendant and the other defendants in the charge, Yusuf said, though the 1st defendant claimed that he was not part of the people that run the companies, “we found out that he is a director of the first and second defendants. He also made a commitment to return the money paid to the second and third defendants. So far, he has returned N150m.
The prosecution tendered various documents which were admitted in evidence.