Justice James Omotosho of the Federal High Court in Abuja has withdrawn from the N10.27 billion alleged money laundering case involving Ali Bello, nephew of former Kogi State Governor Yahaya Bello.
The judge announced his recusal on Thursday after an unresolved allegation that vital evidence admitted in the trial had been tampered with.
Ali Bello is standing trial alongside Dauda Sulaiman on a 10-count charge filed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
The evidence at the centre of the controversy includes Exhibits N and O, which contain extracts from a mobile phone. The court had earlier directed the Department of State Services and the Nigeria Police Force to investigate allegations that a court registrar, Nasiru Onimisi Zubairu, colluded with Sulaiman to alter the evidence.
Justice Omotosho said the security agencies had yet to submit their investigative report about seven months after the matter arose.
The judge said the disputed evidence was important to the determination of the defendants’ no-case submission and that any ruling he made could give rise to allegations of bias because of the unresolved tampering issue.
He therefore returned the case file to the Chief Judge for reassignment, saying the decision was in the interest of justice.
The controversy emerged after Zubairu allegedly told the court that Sulaiman approached him and asked him to delete WhatsApp messages from the exhibits, promising him a house in return.
The court subsequently heard evidence from EFCC investigator Muhammed Audu Abubakar that several messages contained in the phone extracts were no longer available.
Among the deleted conversations were messages concerning alleged movements of various sums of money, including references to N100 million, N60 million, N30 million, N50 million and N93 million.
Abubakar told the court that he had encountered the deleted messages during his investigation into the alleged fraud.
The prosecution subsequently called for a forensic examination of the phone and urged the court to revoke Sulaiman’s bail over the alleged tampering.
The defence teams expressed concern over the development and asked the court to await the outcome of a forensic investigation.
The EFCC had closed its case on June 2 after calling 17 witnesses. Bello and Sulaiman subsequently sought permission to file no-case submissions, arguing that the prosecution had failed to establish a prima facie case requiring them to enter a defence.
The charge, marked FHC/ABJ/CR/550/2022, alleges that Bello and Sulaiman fraudulently withdrew N10,270,556,800 from the Kogi State treasury and delivered the money to Abuja-based Bureau de Change operator Rabiu Tafada for safekeeping or conversion into foreign currencies for personal benefit.
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