The residence of Akinwunmi Ambode, former governor of Lagos state, in Epe area of the state, has been raided by officials of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
YaahooJournalist understands that the EFCC officials raided Ambode’s residence on Tuesday, August 20, Tony Orilade, EFCC spokesman, confirmed.
The EFCC spokesman said the anti-graft agency had received petitions against Ambode, and that it was investigating his administration.
”Yes, we received petitions regarding the governor, and we are investigating,” he said in response to a question from TheCable.
When asked if officials of the EFCC were at the residence of the former governor, he said: ” Yes, that is part of the investigation.”
YaahooJournalist recalls that A federal high court sitting in Lagos ordered the freezing of three bank accounts allegedly linked to the former governor over N9.9 billion fraud following an ex parte application by the EFCC.
This online news media understands that the accounts are domiciled in First City Monument Bank (FCMB), Access Bank, and Zenith Bank with numbers 5617984012, 0060949275 and 1011691254 respectively
The anti-graft agency had prayed the court to freeze the accounts pending the conclusion of an investigation and possible prosecution of Adewale Adesanya, permanent secretary in the office of the chief of staff to the governor of the state, for money laundering.
A member of the EFCC investigating team, Kungmi Daniel, said the anti-graft agency discovered “a huge inflow of N9,927,714,443.29” from the state accounts into an FCMB bank account opened on September 17, 2018, during the administration of Ambode.
Daniel said the account was operated by Adesanya. Ambode denied operating those accounts, saying he had no personal links to them.
“Those accounts were opened in the course of normal operations by the Lagos state government for its administrative purposes and not for the former governor’s personal transactions as was being wrongly insinuated and have been operated to ensure smooth operations of government activities by previous and present administrations,” he had said in a statement issued by his media aide, Habib Aruna.
“The former governor was not and will never be involved in any unauthorised use of government property and resources.”
