Prof. Itse Sagay Challenged Patience Jonathan To Explain How She Earned $5m Traced Into Her Own Bank Accounts

The Chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, Prof. Itse Sagay (SAN), has challenged Patience Jonathan to explain how she earned $5m traced to her accounts by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.

Punch reports that Sagay said if the former first
lady is claiming that she owns the money then
she must explain how she earned it. The
discovery of the money has raised suspicion
about what business deal the former president's
wife must have done to earn her such a
whopping amount.
Patience Jonathan had dragged the EFCC to
court after alleging that the agency froze her
four Skye Bank accounts which are in the name
of four companies said to have a balance of
$31.4m.
Patience had claimed it was Waripamowe
Dudafa, former Special Adviser on Domestic
Affairs to ex-President Jonathan, now being
investigated by the EFCC that help her to open
the four bank accounts which the EFCC froze.
The EFCC has as part of investigations into a
money laundering case against a Waripamowei
Dudafa frozen the account after tracing money
suspected to have been laundered.
The EFCC subsequently charged Dudafa and the
four companies with money laundering. The four
companies, whose accounts have since been
frozen, are Pluto Property and Investment
Company Limited, Seagate Property
Development and Investment Company Limited,
Trans Ocean Property and Investment Company
Limited and Globus Integrated Service Limited.
Reacting to the development, Sagay told Punch
correspondents on the telephone that the Act
establishing the EFCC gave the anti-graft
agency the power to investigate anybody who is
seen to have more wealth than he ought to
have.
The senior advocate wondered how Patience,
who was a civil servant and never held any
government position, could have billions in her
bank accounts.
He said, “The EFCC and ICPC Act have
provisions under which they can ask the court
to freeze the account of a person if a person’s
capacity to earn is below the amount of money
that the person appears to have.
“If you are living a lavish lifestyle and it appears
you don’t have the means to have acquired the
property and the wealth you have, the EFCC is
free to probe you. “If she is claiming the money
belongs to her, she has put herself in a position
where she must explain how she earned it.”