Twenty-one years after he was first convicted for defrauding a Brazilian bank of $242 million, serial fraudster Emmanuel Nwude has again been sentenced to prison for forging documents relating to one of the properties seized from him by a court in 2005.
The Special Offences Division of the Lagos High Court sitting in Ikeja convicted and sentenced Nwude and his two lawyers, Emmanuel Ilechukwu and Rowland Kalu, to one year imprisonment each for forgery and dealing in forfeited property located at Plot Y, Mobolaji Johnson Street, Oregun Alausa, Ikeja.
In her judgement, Justice Mojisola Dada found the defendants guilty on 13 of the 15 counts filed against them, while acquitting them on two counts relating to false statements.
Nwude and the two lawyers were arraigned by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) before Justice Dada for allegedly forging documents relating to the property, creating documents without authority, dealing with forfeited property without authorisation, and transferring forfeited property to nominees.
The trio were also charged with making false statements to a public officer, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, attempt to pervert the course of justice, fabricating evidence, giving false evidence under oath, and providing false information to the EFCC.
The offences were said to have been committed between 2011 and 2012.
Following a petition received by the EFCC in July 2017, the defendants were arraigned in March 2018, where they pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Nwude’s legal troubles date back to 2005 when he and three others were convicted by Justice Olubunmi Oyewole, who is now a Justice of the Supreme Court, for impersonating Paul Ogwuma, a former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), to defraud Banco Noroeste, a Brazilian bank, of $242 million between 1995 and 1998.
During the prosecution of the earlier case, Nwude had indicated his intention to enter into a plea bargain with the prosecution.
Part of the agreement required him to surrender his assets, including landed properties, vehicles, shares and stocks, as well as the entire undertaking of his company, Emrus Auto Nigeria Ltd., to repay the defrauded funds.
In convicting Nwude in the earlier case, the court ordered that all the properties listed in the charge be forfeited to the victims of the crime as restitution.
The court further ruled that after the defendants had fulfilled the terms of the plea bargain, the fifth defendant, Emrus Auto Nigeria Ltd., should be wound up and its assets forfeited to the Federal Government of Nigeria.
Following the judgement, the property located at Plot Y, Mobolaji Johnson Street, Oregun, Lagos, owned by Emrus Auto Nigeria Ltd., was sold.
However, after serving his five-year prison term, Nwude later engaged the services of Ilechukwu and Kalu in an attempt to recover the property and sell it, in clear violation of the plea bargain agreement.
