Court orders bank to hand over ex-minister's $153.3m to FG

A Federal High Court in Lagos has ordered the temporary forfeiture of the sum of $153,310,000, that

The money was said to have been stashed into three bank accounts, Punch reports.

In an affidavit filed in support of the ex parte application, an Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) investigator, Moses Awolusi, claimed that the anti-graft agency discovered through its investigations how sometime in December 2014 Diezani invited a former Managing Director of Fidelity Bank Plc, Nnamdi Okonkwo, to her office where they hatched the plan of how a cash sum of $153,310,000 would be moved from NNPC to Okonkwo to be saved for Diezani.

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According to Awolusi, Diezani instructed Okonkwo to ensure that the money was “neither credited into any known account nor captured in any transaction platforms” of Fidelity Bank.

Delivering judgement on the matter, Justice Muslim Hassan gave Sterling Bank and any other interested party 14 days to appear before him to prove the legitimacy of the monies.

"Failure to do so, the funds would be permanently forfeited to the federal government," Hassan added.