Chinese nationals who gave an EFCC employee N50 million in cash are jailed by a court

 

Meng Wei Kun and Xu Kuai, two Chinese nationals, were given six years in jail for fraud by the court of appeal in Sokoto.

The defendants were charged with three counts by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in Sokoto, including conspiracy, money laundering, and attempted bribes for N50 million.

The defendants' charges had been dropped by the trial judge.

However, the court of appeal, presided over by Abubakar Talba, found the respondents guilty of two of the three charges when it rendered its decision in the EFCC's Friday appeal.

The judge stated, "The respondents are charged with conspiracy and making a cash payment to Abdullahi Lawal (then zonal head of EFCC Sokoto) in excess of the threshold provided by the Money Laundering Prohibition Act 2011 (as amended in 2012), which was established beyond a reasonable doubt before the lower Court, but surprisingly the trial Judge somersaulted in his judgement and recanted.

Talba ruled that the EFCC had established the charges' veracity beyond a shadow of a question.

 The trial judge "created doubts in his mind while discharging his responsibilities, I regret to say that the judgment is like a fiction by the trial judge," the judge said.

"There is no question that the trial judge gravely erred in believing that no crime was done.

"Conspiracy is a separate offense even if the actual offense is aborted, and in the present case, there is conclusive, convincing, and indisputable proof that the offense was committed.

"The respondents are Chinese, and while a crime of this seriousness carries the death sentence in their home country, they are corrupting our nation here. 

"Corruption will under no circumstances be tolerated by the judges of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. According to President Muhammadu Buhari, "corruption will kill Nigeria if we don't kill it."

The court found the Chinese nationals guilty and gave them three years in prison on each of the two charges after finding the appeal to be "immensely meritorious."

Each convicted person had the choice of paying a N10 million fine for each count, though.

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