Transparency Nigeria Group has called on the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to remove the Chief Executive Officer of WEMA Bank, Ademola Ademise, over alleged fraud.
The group in a statement signed by the Communications Director, Dahiru Mohammed, said that the bank under Ademise covered up monumental fraud orchestrated by cronies and companies of National Leader of All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.
By failing to act to nip the alleged fraudulent activities in the bud, the group said, “Mr Ademise failed in his fiduciary duties and allowed a powerful politician to use Wema Bank as a clearing house for laundered funds. ”
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Transparency Nigeria cited a Peoples Gazette story dated November 23, 2021, wherein the online newspaper reported that Ocean Trust Limited, a company linked to Tinubu, shuffled billions of naira between its accounts with Wema Bank.
Peoples Gazette reported that between January and June 2019, Ocean Trust summarily moved N16.4billion from its operations accounts into a fixed deposit account all domiciled in Wema Bank.
It said that the movement of the huge sum followed the court case instituted by Dapo Apara, a former Managing Director of Alpha Beta, a company partially owned by Tinubu.
Apara’s counsels had specifically named Ocean Trust as one of the firms allegedly used to siphon funds from Alpha Beta, which was contracted by the Lagos State Government to manage its tax collection at a time.
Documents filed by Apara’s counsels stated that no fewer than N150 billion flowed through Alpha Beta’s books from Lagos.
The report stated that on January 2, 2019, Ocean Trust moved N1.5billion from its 0702892574 Wema Bank account to another 0122613238 account within Wema Bank with narration: “Closure proceeds”.
Also, on January 9, 2019, N800million was transferred to the same bank account.
Similarly, on January 16, 2019, N500million was also transferred to the same account.
This was followed by N1.5 billion, N800 million, and N500 million transferred to the 0122613238 Ocean Trust account on February 1, February 8 and February 15 in 2019, respectively.
Furthermore, the same account got N1.5 billion on March 4, while N800 million and N500 million were transferred on March 11 and 18, 2019.
On April 3, the account received yet another N1.5billion while N800million was credited to it on April 10 and another N500million on April 17.
N1.5 billion was moved to the account on May 3 while N600million and N500million were credited to the account on May 10 and May 17 respectively.
On June 3, N1.5billion was transferred to the Ocean Trust account with another N600million on June 10 and another N500million on June 17.