Chief Mike Ozekhome (SAN) has replied the EFCC after the anti-graft agency revealed reasons it froze his company account.
Ozekhome
told a Federal High Court in Lagos that the Economic and Financial
Crimes Commission had no justification to freeze his Guaranty Trust Bank
account with a balance of N75m.
The Senior Advocate of Nigeria also confirmed that he was paid by one of his clients, Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State.
He
stressed that the N75m was his legitimate earning, which the Governor
had paid him out of a total of N250m legal fee which Fayose owed him.
play
Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose(Punch)
Ozekhome however urged Justice Abdulaziz Anka
to reverse the freezing order obtained by the EFCC on February 7, 2017,
saying it was not his business to probe the source of his client’s
income from which he was paid his legitimate legal fee.
He
showed the judge correspondences between him and Fayose, wherein he
demanded payment of his legal fees and where Fayose, in reply, sought
his (Ozekhome’s) understanding, stating that he was unable to pay at the
time because the EFCC had frozen his bank accounts.
Ozekhome
recalled that Fayose paid him after Justice Taiwo Taiwo of the Federal
High Court in Ado Ekiti on December 13, 2016 unfroze his accounts with
the Zenith Bank.
“The account frozen
by Justice Idris had been unfrozen by Justice Taiwo and made operational
after it was found that material facts were suppressed,” Ozekhome said.
But the EFCC lawyer, Rotimi Oyedepo,
urged Justice Anka not to grant Ozekhome’s prayer, saying the SAN ought
to have known that the money paid to him formed part of proceeds of
“fraudulent activities.”
“The
N75million is from the proceeds of the alleged crime fraudulently taken
from the ONSA and kept in Fayose’s account from where it was transferred
to Ozekhome,” he said.
The matter under Justice Anka was adjourned till April 3, 2017 for ruling.
No comments:
Post a Comment