BY  ABDULWAHAB  ABDULAH & ONOZURE DANIA

IKEJA – Former Managing Director of  Intercontinental Bank Plc (now Access Bank), Dr Erastus Akingbola yesterday stepped into the witness box to defend the allegation of stealing  N47.1 billion  brought against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC while he held sway as the Chief Executive Officer of the bank.

Akingbola who was led in evidence in the witness box for more than five hours by his counsel, Chief Felix Fagbohungbe, SAN, put up a strong defense against several allegations of fraud levied against him.

He however admitted being the Chairman of two of the companies mentioned in the transactions leading into the charge in court. According to him, the companies were formed by him more than 15 years ago.

He described the allegations against him by the anti-graft agency as false, incorrect and malicious.

He told the court in his evidence in chief that he neither authorised nor benefitted from any of the transactions for which he was being prosecuted.

He denied ever transferring 8.5 million and 1.3 million Pounds Sterling belonging to the bank to Fulgher Solicitors, a United Kingdom-based law firm between March and July 2009.

“My Lord, this is not correct because money was not paid from the bank’s NOSTRO account but through the NOSTRO account.

“Like any other customer of the bank or any Nigerian that needs foreign exchange, I commissioned the bank to buy them for me.

“I put the naira equivalent down before they bought the exchange and my transfers did not go through until the naira equivalent was in the hands of our foreign operations department staff,” he said.

He said the naira equivalent was sourced from Regal Investment Company Ltd., owned by the Board Chairman of Intercontinental Bank, Dr Raymond Obieri, who granted him a N2.2 billion loan.

The former managing director added that after sourcing the money, he instructed the bank’s Head of Foreign Operations, Mrs Ayoola Ayinde, to go ahead with the transfers.

“I do not know if the transactions passed through his personal domiciliary account with the bank because there is no complaint from the beneficiary.

“I could only have known such things if there was a complaint from the beneficiary in the UK but there was none. If I may add my Lord, Intercontinental Bank was a bank with over 1,000 branches in Nigeria, 50 in Ghana and in other countries and so I had no time to be checking such things, ‘’

Akingbola, however, admitted that he was the chairman and a signatory to the accounts of Tropics Securities Ltd, being managed by Dada, Tropics Property Ltd, Tropics Finance Ltd and Balkison Nigeria Ltd.

The EFCC had claimed that Akingbola used his influence to instruct the bank to pay N18.6 billion to these companies for the purpose of buying shares on behalf of the bank.

Responding to the allegation, he said: “I never processed, instructed or authorised such payments and neither did I receive any money from these companies, not to talk of stealing it. “I am  only a signatory to their accounts because I signed when the accounts were being opened about 15 years ago.”