Justice Gabriel Kolawole of the Federal High Court, Abuja, has fixed June 28, 2017 to deliver ruling on whether the statement of Osarenkhoe Afe, who is standing trial along with Stephen Oronsaye, a former Head of Service to the Federation, for a N2 billion fraud case, was obtained voluntarily or otherwise.
Oronsaye and Afe, managing director of Federick Hamilton Global Services Limited, are facing an amended 35-count charge bordering on stealing and obtaining money by false pretence.
They are being charged along with five companies – Hamilton Global Services Limited; Cluster Logistic Limited; Kangolo Dynamic Cleaning Limited, and Drew Investment & Construction Company Limited, alleged to have been used to perpetrate the fraud.
Oluwole Aladedoye, counsel for Afe had on June 21, 2016 objected to the admissibility of his statement to the EFCC, prompting the trial judge to commence a trial-within- trial, on June 24, 2016 to “determine whether the statement was voluntarily obtained from him or not”.
In proving its case, the prosecution, led by O.A. Atolagbe, had on February 16, 2017 through one of its witnesses, Mustapha Gadanya, told the court that Afe on his own volition wrote the statement dated March 16, 2011, after his short interaction with him as second-in-command of the EFCC’s Pension Fraud Team in 2011.
“So he gave the statement voluntarily and everything in it was by him and he signed it; he was not detained, harassed or intimidated; after he finished writing the statement I left him to go home,” he stressed.
Justice Kolawole had accepted the statement as exhibit ID2, pending the conclusion of the trial-within -trial which came to a close on June 6, 2017.