‘You Never Reported To Us’ – Nigeria Police Expose How Redeemed Church Pastor Misled Lagos Court In Alleged N1.7Billion Money Laundering Case

The Zone 2 Police Command, Onikan, Lagos has exposed how Isaac Adewole, a pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God misled the Lagos State Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to issue legal advice in the case of money laundering.

According to the command, it never investigated an alleged case of N1.7 billion fraud involving Adewole, who is the Managing Director of Shibawells Energy Services Limited.

Between January 28 and July 18, 2021, the suspicious N1.7 billion was moved to the pastor’s account, numbered 0122367964, domiciled in Wema Bank, documents seen by SaharaReporters have shown.

Multiple sources familiar with the alleged fraud said Adewole approached the bank in 2018 for a loan to boost his oil trading business using his neighbour’s assets as collateral.

Granting the loan to the pastor, the financial institution opened an account for him where the money was paid.

The account was however used to illegally move N1.7 billion from the bank in 2021 to multiple accounts operated by top staff members and their proxies.

The source said, “He used his neighbour’s house for collateral of the loan which was granted to him and promised to return it within six months. But three years after, the man approached him for his house document, that was when he told him of the fraudulent act.

“He said the bank paid N1.7 billion into the account using different multinational companies like Dana Airlines, Caverton helicopter and two others, one N300 million, one N270 million, one 600 million and like that, it’s only one of the transactions that they didn’t put a name there,” a policeman involved in the case had told SaharaReporters.

“Guess what they do (sic) after, they now moved that N1.7 billion from Adewole’s accounting into different bank accounts in tranches. Like the one I told you —N600 million, they immediately put it in another account in form of N150 million, N100 million, N100 million, N90 million. The pastor’s account is known as Shibawells Energy Limited. The one for Dana that they moved N160 million to, that was how they did it too, they immediately sent it to another account in smaller units as well.

“So, the pastor approached the bank instead of the police. The top management staff involved called him and asked him what he wanted, they now ended with an agreement that the bank would give him an extra loan of N1.5 billion and he agreed. Remember I told you this man is the managing director of Shibawells Energy Limited, a company that does supply aviation fuel.

“So, we realised it was well planned and the names of Dana, Caverton and others were intentionally used to cover up the fraud so people won’t notice. We also realised in our investigation that this money was given to the banks by the CBN (Central Bank of Nigeria) and these top officials had to use an account to move it out and use it for something else.

“He has a partner, we called him and realised he wasn’t aware of the transaction. He was shocked, he realised the statement presented to him was forged to hide the fraudulent transaction.”

According to Adewole’s statement of account obtained by SaharaReporters, on January 28 2021, via transaction ID No: M35660, he received the sum of N424,811,000 from Caverton, N160,000,000 from Dana and N630,000,000 from Beam Energy, all with the same transaction number.

On June 18, 2021, via transaction ID No: M104031, the pastor received the sum of N300,000,000 via NIP transfer from an undisclosed account source.

Also on June 18, 2021, via transaction ID No: M104031, Adewole received the sum of N270,000,000 from Messrs Morrifoil Oil and Gas Ltd., all totalling N1,784,811,000.

In order to ascertain the legitimacy of these transactions, all the companies who were on record in the narration in the statement of account were invited for questioning by policemen from Area G, Lagos State Command led by ACP Ibrahim Zungura.

Each of them denied having made any of the payments attributed to them.

They also made statements to deny involvement and wrote to the police to dissociate themselves from the transactions.

Also, the statement showed that the funds deposited in Adewole’s account were not removed in that order or in the sums deposited but carefully removed in different tranches. Subsequently, a case with suit number MIK/B/6/2022 was instituted by the Area G Police Command in a Lagos magistrate’s court in February 2022.

However, the case, which had Adewole, managing director of Shibahwells Energy, and Kingsley Ananwude, a staff member of Wema Bank, as defendants, was struck out following legal advice from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP), Lagos State which stated that the pastor had earlier reported the illegal transactions to Zone 2 Police Command.

The DPP advice however said all the companies who were on record in the narration in the statement of account denied doing any transaction with Adewole to warrant them sending him such an amount of money.

“Adewole Isaac admitted collecting Page A4 title document and also cleared the doubts as to the rumour of money laundering through his company’s account by reporting the case to Zone 2 in which DPP is prosecuting the staff involved in the diversion,” part of the Legal Advice signed by the DPP read.

However, the Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department, Zone 2 Command Headquarters said it never received any petition on the alleged case of N1.7 billion money laundering nor investigated such a case as alleged in the legal advice of the DPP.

“POLICE REPORT-CUM-CLARIFICATION

RE-ALLEGATION OF ONE BILLION SEVEN HUNDRED MILLION NAIRA (1,700,000,000) MONEY LAUNDERING

“I refer to your letter dated 7th July, 2022 requesting clarification on the role of Zone 2 Police Command Onikan, Lagos in the investigation of an alleged case of One Billion, Seven Hundred Million Naira (1,700,000,000.00) of Shinahwells Energy Services Limited account domiciled in Wema Bank Plc.

“I wish to be emphatic on the Fact that Zone 2 Police Command Onikan, Lagos neither received any petition on the alleged case of N1,700,00,000.00 money laundering nor investigated such (a) case as alleged.

“On the above premises, since there is no investigation conducted into the alleged case of N1,700,000,000.00, police investigation requested cannot be issued out, please,” DCP Agbaminoja Toyin said on behalf of the command.