Eight years after he was first charged to court on an 11-count charge bordering on money laundering and corruption, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), on Thursday, re-arraigned former Benue State governor, Gabriel Suswam, on the same charges.
The trial of Suswam on an alleged N3 billion fraud alongside the Commissioner of Finance under his administration, Omadachi Okolobia, recommenced at the Federal High Court in Abuja, before Justice Peter Lifu, following a resuscitation of the charges by the anti-graft agency after an eight-year hiatus.
In one of the counts leveled against them, the EFCC counsel, Oluwaleke Atolagbe, said Suswam who was Benue governor from 2007 to 2015, and Okolobia allegedly accepted cash payments in the sums of N128 million, N100 million, N150 million and N200 million, on different occasions from one Gera James, a non-financial institution, which exceeded the threshold authorised by law and contrary to the Money Laundering Act.
