A Federal High Court in Abuja has declined a request by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to cross-examine its witness in the ongoing trial of alleged money laundering trial of the immediate past Governor of Kogi State, Yahaya Bello. 

In a ruling on Thursday, Justice Emeka Nwite held that there was no legal provision that allows the court to permit the prosecution to re-examine its witness in the manner proposed by anti-graft agency’s lawyer, Kemi Pinheiro (SAN).

Justice Nwite said: “I must agree with the learned counsel to the defendant that the EFCC can only cross-examine its own witness after it has declared such witness a hostile witness.

“The argument of the learned counsel to the prosecution is misconceived.

“This honourable court is not shutting the prosecution from re-examining the witness, but must restrict itself to pages 1, 14 and 15 of Exhibit 19 where issues were addressed by the defence. 

“The prosecution is not allowed to re-examine the witness outside the pages prescribed,” the judge said.

The witness, Nicholas Ojehomon, Internal Auditor at the American International School, Abuja (AISA) – who is the third prosecution witness – had, at the last hearing, said there was no wire transfer of fees from the Kogi State Government or any of the Local Governments in the state to the account of the school.

Under cross-examination by the defence, Ojehomon was made to read out a part of an earlier judgment by a High Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) where the court held among others, that there was no court order for AISA to return fees paid for Bello’s children to EFCC.

The court also noted that there was no judgment declaring the money as proceeds of money laundering.

At Thursday’s proceedings, the prosecution called another witness, Mshelia Arhyel Bata, a Compliance Officer with Zenith Bank.

Bata, who is a subpoenaed witness, confirmed that certificates of identification were attached to the statements of accounts provided by the bank in the seven sets of documents presented, as requested in a subpoena. 

The court subsequently admitted the statements of account of Kogi State Government House Administration and six others as exhibits.

The witness told the court the withdrawal limits allowed for individuals, corporate organisations and government, adding that before the cashless policy, it was pegged at N10 million for government and N500, 000 for individuals. 

Pinheiro draw the witness’ attention to a the transaction of May 23 2016 on one of the statements of account, which was a transaction under the name, Abdulsalami Hudu. 

Upon request by Pinheiro that he explains the transaction, the witness said: “It is a cash withdrawal of N10 million in accordance with the then maximum threshold allowed for cheque withdrawal per transaction.”

Bata said there were nine cash transactions on the same date.

On the credit transactions of January, 30 2018 the witness confirmed that there were 10 separate credit transactions of various sums, totalling about N1.092bn.

When asked to mention the total amount of withdrawals, the defence lawyer, Joseph Daudu (SAN) and told the court that the prosecuting lawyer knew that the transactions were for security vote.

The witness aggregated the total amount of withdrawals to N1.968 billion, saying they were on different dates.

He also read out the inflow and outflow between 2nd of May 2018 and 19th May, 2018.

At the conclusion of the prosecuting lawyer’s examination of the witness, Justice Nwite adjourned till Friday for the defence lawyer to cross-examination the witness.