Patience Jonathan get access to earlier frozen $5.9m Skye bank account

Dame Patience Jonathan

A Federal High Court in Lagos on Tuesday has granted former First lady, Patience Jonathan, access to her recently frozen $5.9 million.


 The court had on April 6th frozen the money which was earlier seized by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.
 The anti-graft agency suspected that the funds found in a Skye bank account belonging to former first lady, Dame Patience Jonathan are proceeds from financial crimes.

The EFCC had earlier applied for a stay of execution on the court order unfreezing her account. However at the court hearing today, counsel to EFCC, Rotimi Oyedepo, informed the court that the agency was withdrawing its application for stay of execution on the order and is also not going to appeal the order.

Ifedayo Adedipe, counsel to Dame Patience confirmed to the court that he had been served with the EFCC’s application to withdraw its application for stay of proceedings.

Adedipe also alerted the court of his clients plan to withdraw the Form 48 and Form 49 he filed to cite Skye Bank for contempt of court for not allowing Patience Jonathan withdraw money from the account despite a court order unfreezing the account.

After hearing both sides, the presiding judge, Justice Olatoregun, granted the request for withdraw of their respective applications, giving Patience Jonathan unrestrained access to make withdrawals from the account.

The discovery of the $5.9 Million Skye bank account of the nation’s former first lady, Dame Patience Jonathan began as a money laundering case against a former Special Adviser on Domestic Affairs to ex-President Jonathan, Waripamowei Dudafa, the EFCC had traced four company accounts to him with a balance of $15m.

The EFCC subsequently charged Dudafa and the four companies with money laundering.

The four companies, whose accounts have since been frozen, are Pluto Property and Investment Company Limited, Seagate Property Development and Investment Company Limited, Trans Ocean Property and Investment Company Limited and Globus Integrated Service Limited.

A source at the EFCC said, “While we were investigating Dudafa, we traced the four companies to him. The companies have domiciliary accounts at Skye Bank with a balance of about $15m. So, we obtained a court order and froze the accounts.

“We then traced the directors of the companies who then denied ownership of the accounts. It was later that we were informed that the accounts belonged to Patience Jonathan and that she is the sole signatory to the accounts. She was given a special card which she used in making withdrawals across the world.

“We, therefore, wondered why the accounts were not opened in her name if she had nothing to hide. In fact, we later found out that her personal account, which bears her name, has a balance of $5m.

One wonders where a person, who has never held a government position, got the money from. She was not our initial target but she certainly has questions to answer.”

Jonathan’s wife has, however, sued Skye Bank for freezing her bank accounts and giving the EFCC vital information about her finances.

Patience filed a N200m fundamental rights enforcement suit against Skye Bank Plc.

One Sammie Somiari, who deposed to an affidavit on behalf of Patience, claimed that the EFCC placed a No Debit Order on the four accounts in July, in the course of probing Dudafa.

The EFCC has now filed an amended 17 counts suit against Dudafa and seven others, including the four companies, wherein the suspects were accused of conspiring to conceal $15,591,700, which the EFCC claimed they ought to have known formed part of proceeds of an unlawful act.

Somiari said in the affidavit filed on behalf of Patience, who is said to be away for an urgent medical treatment abroad, that it was Dudafa who helped Patience open the four bank accounts which the EFCC froze.

According to him, Dudafa had on March 22, 2010 brought two Skye Bank officers, Demola Bolodeoku and Dipo Oshodi, to meet Patience at home to open five accounts.

The deponent claimed that Patience was the sole signatory to the accounts.

He, however, claimed that after the five accounts were opened, Patience later discovered that Dudafa opened only one of the accounts in her name, while the other four were opened in the names of companies belonging to Dudafa.

Somiari added, “The applicant (Patience) complained about this to Dudafa, who at his prompting and instance promised to effect the change of the said accounts to the applicant’s name; and to effect this change, Dudafa brought the said bank manager, Mr. Dipo Oshodi, who was purported to have effected the changes. This was around April 2014.

“The applicant is not a director, shareholder or participant in the companies named in the aforementioned four accounts.

“The bank official, Mr. Dipo Oshodi, as it would appear, did not effect or reflect the instruction of the applicant to change the said accounts to her name(s) despite repeated requests of the applicant.

“Besides, the ATM credit cards bearing the said companies’ names were brought to the applicant by Mr. Dipo Oshodi of the second respondent bank, who promised to replace them once the cards bearing the changed names were available, but he never did.

“However, since 2010 up until 2014 and thereafter, the applicant had been using the cards on the said accounts and operating the said accounts without let or hindrance.

“Even in May, June and July 2016, the applicant travelled overseas for medical treatment and was using the said credit cards abroad up until July 7, 2016 or thereabout when the cards stopped functioning.”

In her fundamental rights suit, Patience urged the court to compel the EFCC to immediately remove the No Debit Order placed on her accounts.

She also asked the court to order Skye Bank to pay her damages in the sum of N200m for what she termed a violation of her right to own personal property under Section 44 of the Constitution.