- Trial in fraud case of Godwin Emefiele resumed on Thursday
- Ex-central banker suspended last June by President Bola Tinubu
Prosecutors have accused Nigeria’s former central bank governor, Godwin Emefiele, of falsifying information that enabled him to obtain more than $6 million from the bank’s coffers, a charge that carries a sentence of at least seven years in prison.
Nigeria’s Attorney General — in a filing made to the High Court in Abuja, the capital — accused Emefiele and one other of “falsely representing” a high-ranking government official and asking the central bank to provide $6.2 million in line with a presidential directive, which he allegedly knew to be false. The charge, along with 19 others, were contained in court documents seen by Bloomberg.
The ex-central bank chief was suspended by President Bola Tinubu last June, and was arrested soon afterward and taken into custody. Tinubu subsequently ordered an investigation of the monetary authority’s operations and a report in December made several accusations against Emefiele including holding hundreds of unauthorized overseas bank accounts and buying two banks through proxies.
Some of those allegations have now been added to an ongoing fraud trial that first began in November and resumed sitting on Thursday in Abuja. Emefiele, who is currently out on bail and can now travel to other cities within Nigeria, has denied all charges.
A few of the charges against Emefiele are for incidents that purportedly happened in the first two months of last year, when Nigeria was mired in a controversial currency-redesign project initiated by the central bank as the nation headed into a tightly contested presidential election.
Emefiele was accused by Tinubu’s campaign of acting on his own in the botched redesign of naira notes to undermine the ruling party’s election campaign, which he denied. Former President Muhammadu Buhari has backed up the ex-governor, saying that he signed off on the policy.
