NEWS
Imo: Gov. Okorocha under investigation by EFCC
The Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, on Friday disclosed that it’s investigating
the Governor of Imo State, Rochas Okorocha.
EFCC disclosed that
it’s investigating Okorocha and the state government for a case of money
laundering.
The Commission’s
zonal head for South East, Usman Imam during a briefing yesterday said the
state government used funds meant for workers during the just concluded
elections.
Usman stated that
the Commission’s operatives blocked accounts belonging to the state government
in the build-up to the election, following a tip-off.
According to Usman,
EFCC’s timely intervention saved the state over N5bn that would have been
deployed for vote buying by the Okorocha’s administration.
He said: “About
N7.9bn is what had been blocked, although with pressure, subsequently, about
N2.5bn was released for salaries. On the whole, we have over N5bn of those
funds blocked; we are following up to see what actually happened.
“Honestly, what we
discovered was that within two days, N700m was withdrawn in cash; N200m on the
first day and N500m on the second day and all these monies were disbursed in a
manner that was honestly unpalatable.
“Distribution to
school teachers; I don’t know, schools that you were not funding and you wake
up on the eve of the election and withdrew N500m cash and start distributing
N1000 each or so to teachers. Whatever that means, I don’t know.
“When we came in,
we were able to save about seventy something millions of the funds that we
discovered were not disbursed, we also blocked it. People are still answering
questions as to who asked them to move those monies, monies that were blocked
at the banks.
“The sad story
about this was that these monies were the intervention funds; the bailout funds
that the Federal Government released to states to pay salaries when they were
having problems paying salaries.
“They didn’t
utilize that money to pay the salaries; they warehoused it and kept it until
the election period, they started attempting to draw down the money. Whatever
happens, we have saved over N5bn of that money, as we talk, two weeks to
handover. Probably, the next government would have that money to use it better.
There are a lot of other general investigations going on in Imo right now.”
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