A former accountant-general of the federation, Ahmed Idris, on Thursday in an FCT High Court, objected to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) tendering a video recording of operatives’ interview sessions with him and others.

The compact disc containing the video was tendered by the prosecuting counsel, Rotimi Jacobs, SAN, through the prosecution’s first witness (PW1) in the trial-within-trial in the ongoing trial of Mr Idris and three others for alleged fraud.

The court ordered the trial-within-trial following the objection raised by counsel for Mr Idris, Chris Uche, SAN.

The trial was on the basis that his client’s statements that the prosecution sought to tender on November 23, 2022, were not made on the ground of deception and inducement.

Mr Idris, Geoffrey Olusegun Akindele, Mohammed Kudu Usman, and Gezawa Commodity Market and Exchange Limited are standing trial on a 14-count charge bordering on stealing and fraudulent diversion of public funds to the tune of N109.5 billion.

They were brought before Justice Yusuf Halilu by EFCC on behalf of the federal government in the case marked CR/199/2022. They pleaded not guilty to the charges preferred against them.

At the resumed hearing, the EFCC witness, Hayatudeen Ahmed, told the court that Mr Idris’ statements were not obtained through deception.

He stated that the investigating team recorded the interview session with Messrs Idris, Akindele and Usman, which was later burnt on a compact disc.

When the prosecution counsel sought to tender the video recording, Mr Idris’ counsel opposed its tendering, saying it amounted to ambush of the defence.

“We vehemently oppose the strategy of springing this video on the defendants. The witness said the video was recorded on May 25 2022, almost three years ago.

“By constitutional provision, the defendants ought to have been served this to enable them to prepare their defence,” Mr Uche said.

He added that he was only served the video on Wednesday evening and could not view it before coming to court.

Counsel for other defendants aligned their objections with Mr Uche’s with counsel for Mr Akindele, Joe Abraham, describing it as “a strange bird from a whirlwind”.

Despite the objections, Justice Halilu ruled against the defendants and admitted the video, which was marked as an exhibit in the trial-with-trial, following which it was played in the open court.

According to Mr Halilu, the video was made after the investigation established that the first to third defendants benefitted from non-existent consultancy from the Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation when Mr Idris was the AGF.

Under cross-examination by Mr Uche, the witness said the lawyers of the three defendants were not present when investigators interviewed them on May 25, 2022.

He admitted that Mr Idris made some of his statements to EFCC in the absence of his lawyer, one Gbenga Adeyemi, while some were made in the lawyer’s presence.

The witness further admitted that apart from the recorded interview session with the three defendants, there were no video recordings of other statements by Mr Idris.

“We don’t bring suspects together to take their statements. We didn’t tell them we were recording the video. There was no lawyer for any of the defendants during the recording of the video,” he said.

He further told the court that the video clip played in court did not capture everything that happened during the interview session, which he said could be more than one hour.

Justice Halilu adjourned the trial until March 20. He, however, set aside the court’s order revoking the bail granted to Mr Akindele.

This followed an application by Mr Akindele’s counsel, informing the court that the second defendant was not in court at the last sitting.

According to him, his client was held up in traffic but eventually made it to court that day, but the case had already been adjourned.

The prosecutor was, however, not against the application. 

(NAN)