Justice Okon Abang of a Federal High Court in Abuja on Wednesday ordered the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to open its case against a Briton, James Nolan, who is being accused of tax evasion and money laundering offences.
Nolan, a signatory to the account of the Process & Industrial Development (P&ID) Nigeria, is standing trial on 15-count charge.
The court ruled on Wednesday that the defendant who is yet to meet the conditions of bail granted him last month has been given enough time to prepare for his defence. Nolan was arraigned on Oct. 21 and admitted to bail on Nov. 7.
He is standing trial in the controversial gas supply contract (P&ID) that led to $9.6bn judgment liability against Nigeria.
The prosecution said that the defendant was a signatory to accounts of Process and Industrial Developments Limited (P&ID Nigeria), the in-country support manager of P&ID Virgin Island.
The prosecution alleged that the defendant engaged in money laundering and tax evasion, forgery of immigration documents, running of a trafficking syndicate and was involved in corrupting Nigerian officials.
Among his bail conditions was to deposit in the sum of N500m bail bond and a surety in like sum.
The judge ordered the Briton who was charged alongside his compatriot, Adam Quinn (at large), to produce a serving senator to stand surety for him in the same bail sum.
In addition, the court said the senator must be someone that does not have a criminal case pending in any court in the country and must have a landed property that is fully developed in the Maitama District of Abuja.
Justice Abang stressed that an officer of the court will verify the statutory Certificate of Occupancy of the property as issued by the Federal Capital Territory Administration.
Besides, he held that the proposed surety must submit three years’ tax clearance certificate and sign an undertaking to always be present in court with the defendant throughout the duration of the trial.
The surety is to depose an affidavit of means with two passport photographs and undertake to pay the total bail sum should the defendant escape from the country before the conclusion of his trial.
The court equally ordered the defendant to surrender all his international passports, even as it mandated the Nigerian Immigration Service to confirm how many passports that were issued to him within the past 20 years.
Prosecution counsel, Bala Sanga, had told the court that the defendant was arrested after an extensive covert manhunt that stretched for over two weeks.
However, when the case came up Wednesday, Paul Iroko, counsel to Nolan, said he has filed application for bail variation.
Justice Abang, nevertheless, asked the anti-graft commission to open its case.
Abang said that commencement of trial of defendant cannot be adjourned based on oral application that he had filed an application for the variation of bail condition.
He ordered the correctional centres to grant access to the defendant’s counsel to visit the defendant in custody and to be briefed by defendant.
The first prosecution witness, Adewale Akinseyi, said that the bank received a request in August to provide account documents in respect of the companies from EFCC.
“The commercial banking team that I work with. We retrieved the account documents and generated the bank statements. We forwarded the documents to EFCC,” he said.
When asked if he made any statement to the EFCC, he responded in the affirmative.
When the statement was requested for, the prosecution counsel, Ekene Iheanacho, said it was not with him. He promised to make it available on Thursday.
The court adjourned to today for continuation of trial.
Felix Omohomhion, Abuja
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