Connected
money man, Mohammed Gobir has been arrested.
He was
reportedly nabbed at his Ikoyi Lagos home on Saturday by operatives of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
Here are
the interesting details
Outdoor giant
Afromedia is battling to handle its most difficult brief ever — how to retrieve
a fortune invested in a phoney deal.
The
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is helping.
The
anti-graft agency has arrested a Lagos businessman, Alhaji Mohammed Gobir, for
allegedly defrauding the foremost outdoor advertising company of cash estimated
to be N1.7 billion in various currencies.
Gobir was
picked up at his Ikoyi home and put in detention.
A source
in the commission said: “The mega heist allegedly fetched Gobir
$3,500,000, N514,457,151.87, $2,102,740, and
51,000 pounds sterling at various times.
“Gobir, a
55–year-old father of two, was picked up by EFCC operatives early
Saturday at his Ikoyi residence and is still being interrogated at the Lagos
office of the anti-graft agency.
“The
suspect allegedly defrauded the advertising company through a phoney investment
deal.
“The
suspect was allegedly introduced to Afromedia sometime in 2008 by their private
placement consultants, Synergy Capital Advisory Limited, as a high networth
investor who was willing to inject N1,000,000,000 into the company, through the
acquisition of shares.
“Based on
his touted pedigree as potential investor, Gobir cozy up to the management and
in no time became chairman of the Business Development Committee of the board
of directors of the company, a position which he later used to defraud the
company.
“Having
earned the trust of the company owners, Gobir started demanding large amounts
of money, which he termed as business expenses to international consultants,
Royal Exchange Burue in the United Kingdom in order to facilitate and secure
investments from his bank in the UK, Natwest Bank London.
“The company gave Gobir $1,000,000 in cash and paid for
his travel expenses on a first class return ticket to UK where he would meet
with the purported investors, which investigation later showed never existed
nor were the meetings ever held.”
The commission said the fraud was uncovered when the group
managing director of Afromedia followed Gobir to London on a business trip.
The source added: “On one good day after the suspect had
collected several amounts of money and made several trips to the UK to meet
with the purported investors, the group managing director of Afromedia
accompanied him to the UK for another round of meeting ostensibly to close the
deal.
“But as soon as they landed in the UK, Gobir made a telephone
call in which his travel companion overheard him scream aloud, saying his
assets were seized by UK anti-money laundering authorities.
“He even showed the GMD an email sent to him for the alleged
seizure.
“The suspect confessed to the MD of Afromedia that his
money( $250,000,000) was seized by the British authorities five years earlier
for alleged money laundering and that he was currently financially handicapped
and he needed a bailout of $3,817,000 to get the European Union Money
Laundering Waiver Certificate.
“The suspect later presented a “waiver certificate”, to the
company and promised to pay them the monies he had collected.”
The Head of Media and Publicity of the EFCC, Mr. Wilson
Uwujaren who confirmed the arrest, said investigation into the scam continued.
No comments:
Post a Comment