The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has opened its case against the former speaker Adeyemi Ikuforiji of the Lagos State House of Assembly.
Ikuforiji is charged with N338.8 million money laundering offences. He is facing trial alongside his former personal assistant Oyebode Atoyebi on 54 counts.
The duo pleaded not guilty on Wednesday before Justice Mohammed Liman when their trial opened and the EFCC called its first witness.
The judge allowed them to continue on an earlier bail granted to them in 2012 when they were first arraigned.
Ekene Ihenacho appeared for the prosecution while Dele Adesina (SAN) appeared for the defendants.
The prosecutor called an EFCC investigator Adebayo Adeniyi as the first witness.
The witness said that in June 2011, a petition was written against the first defendant for allegedly siphoning N500 million monthly from the Lagos House of Assembly.
He said that the EFCC went into investigation and visited the assembly.
He said that from the office of the clerk of the house, EFCC recovered some documents which were instrumental to their investigation, while the clerk was invited to the commission.
“We recovered some payment registers, and when we went through them, we discovered that a lot of cash payments were made to the second defendant, and we invited him to explain why the payments were made to him.
“He told us that the payments were meant for the first defendant, and when we interrogated the first defendant, he actually confirmed that the second defendant was collecting the monies for him,” he said.
The case was adjourned till October 14 for continuation of trial.
