{"id":121275,"date":"2019-05-27T19:39:23","date_gmt":"2019-05-27T18:39:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=121275"},"modified":"2019-05-27T19:41:04","modified_gmt":"2019-05-27T18:41:04","slug":"breaking-court-acquits-goodluck-jonathans-brother-of-40m-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=121275","title":{"rendered":"BREAKING: Court Acquits Goodluck Jonathan&#8217;s Brother Of $40m Fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><span class=\"ds-1col file file-image file-image-jpeg view-mode-embedded centered clearfix block-story-object block-story-object-resource block-story-object-resource-image\"><br \/>\n<span class=\"block-story-object-asset\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"media-element file-embedded\" typeof=\"foaf:Image\" src=\"http:\/\/arewa.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/BREAKING-Court-Acquits-Goodluck-Jonathans-Brother-Of-40m-Fraud.jpg\" alt=\"\"><\/span><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The Federal High Court sitting in Abuja has discharged and acquitted former President Goodluck Jonathan\u2019s cousin, Robert Azibaola, of $40 million laundering charges filed against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.<\/p>\n<p>Nnamdi Dimgba, the judge In the judgment on Monday, said that no credible evidence was adduced to establish the offense of money laundering against Mr. Azibaola.<\/p>\n<p>He said: \u201cThat the prosecutor failed to provide witness from the Office of the National Security Adviser(ONSA).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat the EFCC and the prosecutor cried more than the bereaved.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat the prosecutor has not been able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the 2-count charge against the defendant.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe defendant is hereby discharged and acquainted and not guilty,\u201d the judge ruled.<\/p>\n<p>The EFCC in 2016 filed a seven-count charge against Mr. Azibaola, his wife, Stella, and their company, saying that they received $40 million worth of illicit contract from Mr. Dasuki.<\/p>\n<p>Azibaola and his wife Stella, were arraigned on June 7, 2016, and were admitted to bail in the sum of N500 million each.<\/p>\n<p>On April 27, 2017, they were re-arraigned on a nine-count amended charge.<\/p>\n<p>In the cause of the trial, the prosecution called 10 witnesses and tendered 27 documented evidence against the three parties and closed its case.<\/p>\n<p>Subsequently, Mr. Azibaola and One Plus company were ordered to open their defense on the remaining two counts, as Stella\u2019s name was struck off the charge sheet.<\/p>\n<p>He denied diverting money to his personal use.<\/p>\n<p>On February 6, 2019, his defense team led by Chris Uche, closed its defense after calling two witnesses, including Mr. Azibaola, and presenting several documents.<br \/>\n<span class=\"container container-pod container-pod-short\"><span class=\"adunit-parent hide block-module block-module-ad block-module-ad-300x250\"><span class=\"block-module-image-wrapper\"><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Federal High Court sitting in Abuja has discharged and acquitted former President Goodluck Jonathan\u2019s cousin, Robert Azibaola, of $40 million laundering charges filed against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. Nnamdi Dimgba, the judge In the judgment on Monday, said that no credible evidence was adduced to establish the offense of money [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":121276,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3773,1,3,4],"tags":[4866,11076,10943],"class_list":["post-121275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime","category-more","category-news","category-politics","tag-crime","tag-fraudster","tag-goodluck-ebele-jonathan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=121275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/121276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=121275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=121275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=121275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}