Jim Obazee-led Special Investigative panel probing the activities of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN and other Government Business Entities have recorded a breakthrough with the arrest of the immediate past CBN Director of Finance, Benjamin Adeoye Fakunle.
Fakunle was arrested by operatives of the Department of State Services, DSS on Wednesday while trying to unwind at a lavish party he was hosting in one of his mansions in Abuja in celebration of his retirement from the apex bank.
He had put plans in motion to flee the country on Thursday at 2 am but that has now been thwarted following his arrest.
Fakunle was said to have successfully evaded interrogation several times until he was eventually apprehended.
He was said to have earlier been invited by the Special Investigator’s panel for questioning, but allegedly refused to cooperate during interrogation, despite all the evidence he was confronted with about his complicity in the heist at the CBN.
DSS had equally invited him to their headquarters, but he didn’t honour their invitation, prompting the secret police to storm his home and arrest him.
Fakunle until his retirement and arrest was allegedly used by both the suspended CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele and the current acting governor, Folashodun Shonubi, to commit fraud of monumental proportion.
Recall that the Special Investigator appointed by Presudent Bola Tinubu had traced a whopping N8 trillion looted from the CBN coffers to several private bank accounts.
Many bank chiefs have already been grilled over their roles in these various fraudulent transactions.
Recently, two CBN deputy governors, Kingsley Obiora and Aisha Ahmad as well as Shonubi were arrested, detained and interrogated by the DSS and the Special Investigator over their roles in the alleged heist at the apex bank under Emefiele’s watch.
Fakunle was also said to have been the last finance director of the CBN that cooked the audit report published on the website of the apex bank.
Obazee’s panel had recommended in its preliminary report the immediate withdrawal of the seven-year CBN audited annual financial reports released, following the discovery of some discrepancies and irregularities in the apex bank’s financial accounts.
CBN had in August released its financial reports for years 2016 to 2022 amid the ongoing probe of the apex bank by Tinubu’s Special Investigator. But the audit reports are said to have been found out by the panel to contain inaccurate information and false data.
Fakunle’s arrest, it was gathered, would throw clearer light on the heist perpetrated at the CBN under Emefiele’s watch.
According to security sources, Fakunle operated over 65 personal bank accounts domiciled in Nigeria and foreign countries.
He’s also said to have no fewer than 28 choice properties in Abuja alone.