The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has denied media reports that the Commission was on a clandestine mission with ex- banker and Managing Director of the now defunct Skye Bank (now Polaris Bank), Mr. Tunde Ayeni.
The Commission in a statement made available to newsmen on Friday said there was never a planned meeting between Mr. Ayeni and EFCC chairman Abdulrasheed Bawa.
The circulating story according to the Commission, only vainly tried to push a certain malodorous agenda which was false in its entirety.
“The attention of the Commission has been drawn to a so-called “exclusive’’ news report making the rounds on social media to the effect that the EFCC Chairman, Abdulrasheed Bawa and former Chairman of the defunct Skye Bank, Mr. Tunde Ayeni, are travelling together, abroad, on a clandestine, self-serving mission,” Commission spokesperson Wilson Uwujaren said.
“To start with, there was never a meeting and certainly no “plan” between the EFCC Chair and Mr. Ayeni to go anywhere together.
“Furthermore, while the EFCC Chairman is at this time on an approved mission abroad, Ayeni, whom the fiction-turned-news story says is on a clandestine trip with Mr. Bawa, is, from checks, right here in Nigeria. A cursory check would have confirmed that.
“If the design is to get the Commission to compromise its mandate to investigate and prosecute all cases of economic and financial crimes, then the purveyors of the tendentious story have failed woefully,” he stated.
The statement said the EFCC will not be blackmailed or act in any way predetermined by private interests.
The EFCC under the leadership of Ibrahim Magu, had on March 7, 2019 arraigned Ayeni, Oguntayo and two other companies before Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu of a Federal High Court, Abuja on 10 charges bordering on money laundering to the tune of N25.4bn.