BEVERLY HILLS, September 17, (THEWILL) – Following our previous report on the contentious graft and money laundering investigation conducted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC against the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu and the ripples it created, THEWILL launched an independent investigation which revealed that the Minister wrote a confidential letter to President Muhammadu Buhari last year absolving himself of the allegations.
An authoritative source familiar with the development told THEWILL that the letter was sent to the Presidency sometime in June 2016 after the President returned from one of his trips to London. THEWILL findings further revealed that the EFCC, which did not interview Dr. Kachikwu during its investigation, dropped further action on the matter pursuant to his clarifications in the memo.
The source said the Minister informed the president that no funds were paid into his account by his brother, Dumebi. He explained that instead a collateral put up by his brother for a facility at First Bank Plc. was pursuant to a loan he extended to him before his appointment as Minister that he eventually personally liquidated at maturity.
EXCERPTS FROM KACHIKWU’S MEMO TO THE PRESIDENT
In the letter, Dr. Kachikwu said he was not a party to the business deal between Dumebi and Ms. Olatimbo, which he said was not an oil deal and that he never met her. He adds that neither she nor Dumebi have received any business from the NNPC since he joined the administration.
“If the allegation that the payment of N1bn was collected by my brother for me and for oil contract inducement, why did I not approve a transaction for the complainant?,” Dr. Kachikwu wrote.
On the EFCC allegation that his brother paid N50m and $250, 000 into his private account at First Bank Plc, Dr. Kachikwu said that his brother did not pay money directly into his account explaining that what Dumebi did was to provide a collateral for a line of credit he got from the bank.
“The funds he provided to securitize my loan was to partly fulfill his obligations to repay me a loan granted him by me way before I became minister in 2015,” he wrote, adding that the sum was an insignificant portion of the funds the EFCC was investigating …
Kachikwu then said the money Dumebi sent to him was not cash. “Dumebi simply raised a credit line for me collateralized by the amount he was to pay me… I then took a loan from the same bank. In effect he never really paid as I actually paid off the loan. There is a bank letter to that effect.
“This incident was in August 2015 few weeks after I resumed at NNPC, and whilst I was still serving out my notice in Mobil. In effect I had not fully resumed talk less of approving transactions,” he added.
THEWILL tried unsuccessfully to reach Dr. Kachikwu to confirm whether he indeed authored the said letter. Calls to his phones and text messages were not acknowledged as at the time of writing.
THEWILL notes that the EFCC has declined to comment on their report since we exclusively obtained it and published last Tuesday, September 12, 2017. However, multiple sources with knowledge of the investigation anonymously confirmed the authenticity of the report and added that the Minister was not interviewed as part of the investigation thereby putting the credibility of the exercise to test and failing to give it life.
THEWILL continues to pursue its aggressive journalism of seeking to bring to the open any suspected misconduct by both public and private officials as part of its responsibility to the public. However, in accordance with the ethics of accurate and fair reporting and following these new revelations, as well as our inability to get the EFCC to officially comment on its report, we are constrained to withdraw our earlier conclusions that Dr. Kachikwu is guilty of graft and that he was removed as Group Managing Director of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, because of the report.
Kachikwu, who also serves as Chairman of the Board of the NNPC, was appointed by President Buhari to represent his state of origin, Delta State in the federal cabinet to oversee the reform of the Nigerian oil and gas sector.
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