Ibrahim Magu, the suspended acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), has denied all the allegations levelled against him, insisting he neither embezzled nor mismanaged funds or properties recovered from indicted individuals and companies.
Magu stated his defence in a 69-paged letter dated 20 July and addressed to the Chairman of the Presidential Panel investigating allegations of mismanagement of funds and assets by the EFCC.
He specifically responded to the three important issues bordering on the Report of the Presidential Committee on Audit of Recovered Assets (PCARA), the memo of Abubakar Malami, the Attorney General of the Federation, to the President against him, and the alleged petitions addressed to the AGF which he said were already in the custody of the panel but not served on him.
The embattled anti-graft czar stated that not a dime of the recovered funds was fraudulently converted for his personal use and challenged his accusers to produce evidence of such fraudulent conversion.
He also stated that contrary to the allegations, he never abused the powers of his office as chairman of the anti-graft agency to initiate criminal prosecution.
He explained that the power to prosecute cases was not what he could arrogate to himself, noting that before he was appointed acting Chairman of the commission, the agency had constantly exercised its statutory power to institute criminal charges where prima facie evidence was made out without seeking for the consent of the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF).
He also denied that he or officials of EFCC issued threats issued to judicial officers in the discharge of their official functions, adding that there was never a lack of transparency in the management of recovered assets under his leadership of the commission.
Magu lamented that since his appearance and subsequent detention on July 6, he has repeatedly sought the details of allegations and petitions against him personally and through his lawyers, but the request had not been obliged to date.
Magu is being investigated by a presidential panel led by Retired Justice Ayo Salami, a former president of the Court of Appeal, over allegations of gross misconduct in activities of the EFCC under his watch.
Click on this link to read the full letter of Magu’s response to the presidential panel
Discussion about this post