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 former Kogi State Governor Yahaya Bello for alleged money laundering.

In a ruling yesterday, Justice Emeka Nwite held that there was no legal provision that allowed the court to permit the prosecution to re-examine its witness in the manner proposed by the 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 witness after it has declared such a witness hostile. 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 witness, Nicholas Ojehomon, said to be an Internal Auditor at the American International School, Abuja (AISA), is the third prosecution witness. He 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 the fees paid for Bello’s children to the EFCC.

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

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

Bata, who was subpoenaed, 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 admitted the statements of account of the 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 drew the witness’e attention to 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 explain the transaction, the witness said: “It is a cash withdrawal of N10 million under 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 N1.092 billion.

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 a 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 the second of May 2018, and May 19, 2018.

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