The Federal High Court in Abuja, yesterday resumed the trial of a detained Deputy Commissioner of Police, Abba Kyari over non- disclosure of his assets, with a witness narrating how investigations exposed that the defendant received over N200 million through 10 different bank accounts.
The witness, Mr Ahmed Yero, who was identified as a Chief Investigator with the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, said that the various accounts were tracked through the defendant’s Bank Verification Number, BVN.
Speaking further, he told the court that though a total of 12 bank accounts were traced to Kyari who hitherto headed the Police Intelligence Response Team, IRT, however, two of the accounts were found to be dormant.
Mr Yero, who testified as the ninth prosecution witness, PW-9 told the court that on February 14, 2022, he was directed to lead a team from NDLEA’s Directorate of Assets & Financial Investigation, to look into assets owned by the defendant.
In furtherance of the investigation,he told the Court that the defendant was asked to declare his assets.
Although Kyari declared that he only had three bank accounts but through the BVN portal that was made available to the agency by the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, “we discovered that he owned and operated 10 active bank accounts.”
The PW-9 told the court that the defendant operated different domiciliary accounts for Dollars, Euro and Pound Sterling.
“One of the accounts is a salary account from which the 1st defendant collected salaries and other allowances from the police.
“We firstly looked at the UBA account which he uses to collect salaries. We investigated the account for a period of 16 years, spanning from 2006 to 2022.”
The witness told the court that from the analysis, it was discovered that inflows into the accounts was greater than all the entitlements the defendant received from the police.
He disclosed to the court that the monies were wired directly from the CBN into the defendant’s account and tagged as “operational funds.”
“However, most of the funds were later transferred to family members and associates of the defendant.
“What we also did was to calculate everything the defendant earned in salaries and everything that came into the account from the CBN. We discovered that there was over N200million, above what he should have earned officially.”
