{"id":82308,"date":"2021-06-17T08:29:57","date_gmt":"2021-06-17T07:29:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/?p=82308"},"modified":"2021-06-17T09:07:39","modified_gmt":"2021-06-17T08:07:39","slug":"n25-7bn-fraud-ex-bank-phb-boss-francis-atuche-sentenced-to-6-years-in-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/news\/n25-7bn-fraud-ex-bank-phb-boss-francis-atuche-sentenced-to-6-years-in-prison\/","title":{"rendered":"N25.7bn fraud: Ex bank PHB Boss, Francis Atuche sentenced to 6 years in prison"},"content":{"rendered":"<div dir=\"auto\">Francis Atuche, a former Managing Director of the defunct Bank PHB has been sentenced to 6 years in prison for stealing the sum of N25.7bn belonging to the bank.<\/p>\n<p>Justice Lateef Okunnu of a Lagos High Court convicted Atuche, alongside a former Chief Financial Officer of the bank, Ugo Anyanwu on charges of conspiracy to commit a felony and stealing brought against them by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).<\/p>\n<p>The EFCC had dragged the former bankers to court over allegations that between November 2007 and April 2008, they stole about N25.7bn belonging to the bank.<\/p>\n<p>The anti-graft agency had also claimed that they took about N14.7bn from the N25.7bn, by fraudulently describing it as a loan to some companies and subsequently converted the said sum to personal use.<\/p>\n<p>The EFCC also alleged that another N11bn stolen by the defendants was used to purchase about 984,375,000 units of Bank PHB shares for themselves.<\/p>\n<p>Justice Lateef Okunnu while delivering Judgement on Wednesday found the two guilty on grounds that the EFCC had successfully proved its case against the convicts beyond a reasonable doubt.<\/p>\n<p>Okunnu rejected the claims of the defendants that they were merely professionally negligent.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe defendants abused their powers, ignored established rules and regulations thereby putting the bank and depositors\u2019 funds in danger.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey corruptly took advantage of their positions to confer on themselves undue financial benefits without regard to the health of the bank,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>The Judge, however, cleared Atuche\u2019s wife on the charge of conspiracy and stealing brought against her by the anti-graft agency.<\/p>\n<p>She averred that the EFCC failed to link her to the crime and insisted that suspicion no matter how strong cannot take the place of fact.<\/p><\/div>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Related Posts generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Francis Atuche, a former Managing Director of the defunct Bank PHB has been sentenced to 6 years in prison for stealing the sum of N25.7bn belonging to the bank. Justice&hellip;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Related Posts generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":82309,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>N25.7bn fraud: Ex bank PHB Boss, Francis Atuche sentenced to 6 years in prison - Pointblank News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/news\/n25-7bn-fraud-ex-bank-phb-boss-francis-atuche-sentenced-to-6-years-in-prison\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"N25.7bn fraud: Ex bank PHB Boss, Francis Atuche sentenced to 6 years in prison - Pointblank News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Francis Atuche, a former Managing Director of the defunct Bank PHB has been sentenced to 6 years in prison for stealing the sum of N25.7bn belonging to the bank. 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