The special anti-fraud
unit of the Nigerian police on Wednesday in Lagos arrested former
Managing Director of Intercontinental Bank, Mahmoud Alabi, for fraud
related to a questionable loan write-off.
According to us,Alabi’s
arrest followed a petition submitted to the unit by the brother of a
whistleblower who was allegedly killed for revealing shady dealings
involving former Kwara State Governor Bukola Saraki.
Governor of the Central
Bank of Nigeria, Mr. Sanusi Lamido, had appointed Alabi to run
Intercontinental Bank at the beginning of the CBN’s banking reform in
2009. The reform began with the CBN sacking several commercial bank
chief executives deemed to be linked to corruption.
However, the appointment
of Alabi raised serious concerns at the time. He had served as the MD
of Songa Farms owned by the Saraki family.
In a 2010 petition, the
former MD of the bank, Erastus Akingbola, wrote a nine-page petition to
President Goodluck Jonathan stating that Alabi had improperly written
off N8bn in loans to companies with links to Saraki. He gave the
companies’ names as Linkers, Dicetrade, Skyview Properties and Joy
Petroleum.
Police sources told us that
Alabi wrote off billions of naira in unserviced loans linked to Saraki.
In addition, Alabi decided to release four houses in Lagos and another
two in Abuja that the Sarakis had been used as collateral to secure the
huge loans.
In a telephone interview with us Saraki insisted that the whistleblower was not killed but died of natural causes.
The Commissioner of Police in SFU, Mr. Tunde Ogunsakin, confirmed the arrest, adding that Alabi was being interrogated.
“He is with us,” he said.
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