Pinheiro, while presenting documents before the court said Utomi
took facilities worth Fifty -Nine Million Naira from the bank during the tenure
of Atuche. He said a forty million naira facility was granted to the witness on
July 3, 2008, and another draft of ten million naira was also raised on
September 23, 2008 in favour of the witness. He said the witness, through a
company, U R Maintenance Limited, took another facility of five million naira.
Pinheiro also said one Emmanuel Utomi; a relative of the witness received a cheque
of four million naira allegedly on behalf of the witness from Clairemount
Management Services, a company in which Atuche is alleged to be the sole
signatory.
Pinheiro said that at the time the Board of Directors of the
bank were ratifying facilities granted by the bank, the facilities granted to
the Utomi and many others were not disclosed.
“I suggest to you that the application for these loans predated
the meeting. The reason why you did not pose opposition to the ratification of
those huge loans was because of the various huge facilities taken by you. You
did not voice opposition to the grant of over one hundred billion naira
facilities presented to you for ratification. It is the practice in every
minutes that the purpose of facilities granted are stated in the minutes, but
the minute of the Board of Directors meeting
of July 9, 2008 was an exemption", Pinheiro said.
The witness however
refuted the claims. He explained that he had started servicing the loans before
the bank was allegedly "stolen”.
Apart from Utomi, other board members also took various loan
facilities from the bank. Mike Ajoku, a kinsman of Utomi from Ibusa in
Delta state was granted a N428million (Four hundred and twenty eight million
naira) loan facility. Fidelis Idita, also a kinsman of Utomi from the same
community, took a loan facility from the bank. It was also alleged by the
prosecution that one Consolidated Business Support Services got a facility of
N1 Billion. The company is allegedly linked to one Ifeyinwa Osime, also a
member of the bank's board.
Pinheiro said the reason why most of these facilities granted were
not listed when the CBN called for a list of debtors was because the board
members were beneficiaries of the questionable facilities.
He noted that Utomi, at some point, contradicted his earlier
claims that the bank's credit officer presented the list of all companies to
the board for ratification when he couldn’t recall if the chief credit officer
was male or female.
“On the day over one hundred and twenty billion naira was
allegedly ratified by the Board of Directors, you could not recall whether the chief
credit officer who was alleged to have made the presentation before the Board
was male or female." said Pinheiro.
The matter was adjourned to October 3, 4, 23, 24, 25; November
18 and December 3 and 4, 2013 for continuation of trial.
No comments:
Post a Comment