Magu: Buhari suspends another EFCC senior official

President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered the indefinite suspension of a senior and ‘strong’ official in the legal arm of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), named Abba Ibrahim.

According to Witness, the order was handed down on Monday in line with a request by the Presidential Panel investigating the allegations of graft and misconduct against the former EFCC acting Chairman, Ibrahim Magu.

This newspaper gathered that Ibrahim was one of EFCC’s legal team that “handled sensitive cases.

Ibrahim’s suspension came days after the president approved the suspension of 12 directors in the commission alongside its secretary, Olanipekun Olukoyede.

Onyxnews Nigeria recalls that Magu was on July 6 arrested by a combined team of Department of State Services personnel and policemen and taken to the Presidential Villa in Abuja to answer questions from an investigative panel led by a retired judge of the Court of Appeal, Justice Ayo Salami.

He was detained for about 10 days before being released on bail.

Magu is being interrogated by the presidential panel over financial allegations and improprieties, including money laundering.

He is also accused of mismanagement of recovered assets by the EFCC.

Among the issues Magu is helping the panel to resolve are wide discrepancies in figures of recovered monies published by the agency.

The panel has also asked him to react to the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) report accusing him of siphoning money from the EFCC. NFIU report showed that a particular Bureau de Change, owned by Ahmed Ibrahim Shanono linked to the Acting Chairman based in Kaduna has more than 158 accounts and has been receiving huge sums of funds.

The report also accused Magu of laundering money through Pastor Emmanuel Omale of Hand of God Prophetic Ministry.

Omale was reported to have bought a landed property on behalf of Magu worth N573 million in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The suspended EFCC boss has also been accused of allegedly failing to give proper account of missing 332 out of the 836 recovered real estate property as of March, 2018.

However, Magu has denied the allegations.