$153m: EFCC withdraws Deizani linked charges

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has withdrawn a 14 count charge filed against a former Minister of Petroleum, Deizani Madueke, along with Ben Otti, Nnamdi Okonkwo, Stanley Lawson, Lanre Adesanya, and Dauda Lawal, all of them former officials of commercial banks and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). Daily Trust yesterday gathered that at the resumed hearing of the matter before Justice Muslim Hassan of a Federal High Court Lagos on 5th November 2019, EFCC through its lawyer Rotimi Oyedepo dropped the corruption charges against most of the accused persons through an amended four-count charge. The amended charges which border on money laundering only seeks to prosecute a former Executive Director of First Bank PLC, Dauda Lawal alongside Deizani Madueke and Ben Otti who served as Group Executive Director of finance at the NNPC.