The Department of State Services has revealed that it discovered huge sums of monies stashed in various foreign currencies at the official residence of Justice Adeniyi Ademola.
At the resumed hearing on Tuesday at an Abuja High Court, coordinator of the DSS sting operation, Mr. Ike Onuoha, who testified as the second prosecution witness, PW-2, told the court that they discovered N48m cash during the raid.
Onuoha said when the detectives arrived the Judge’s Apo Legislative Quarters residence they were told Ademola was out of town.
He said on arrival at the house with a duly signed search warrant, the security guard said only the cook who was simply identified as Ken, had keys to the building.
According to the witness, “Ken eventually came and told us the judge was out of town. We then asked him to call the judge on his phone. We did so because we had reasons to believe that the judge was in fact at home.
“When we entered the premises, we called on Ken to call the judge with his mobile phone. Ken called the judge severally but he refused to pick.
“Much later, the judge sent a text message that he was not in town. After repeated calls, he switched off his phone. At that point, we had no option than to force open the main door. “When we entered, we saw Justice Ademola in the master’s bedroom upstairs in his night wears. That was few minutes after 12 midnight.”
He added, “As we continued our search on the ground floor, we encountered a locked bedroom. We requested for the keys, but we were not given.
“We then had no option but to force open the door. Inside the bedroom, we saw a locked wardrobe which we also had to force open when the keys were not made available to us.
“Inside the wardrobe, we found a Ghana-must-go bag containing various N1,000 denomination notes to the tune of N39.5million after counting it on the spot. “We also found two black pump action rifles and 35 live cartridges of ammunition. We also found a silver-coloured flash drive”.
Speaking further Onuoha told the court that they discovered another locked room where they recovered the sum of N8.5m in N1,000 denomination inside a black and white medium sized bag locked up in a wardrobe.
He said thereafter they found “in the master’s bedroom, in an open wardrobe, a black bag where we found the sum of N6m, 121,179 US dollars, 4,400 Euros, 80 pounds, 1,010 Indian Rupees. We also recovered six ATM cards, eight cheque books, eight deposit slips for various banks, two firearm licence – one for Honourable Justice A.R. Muhammed, the other for Honourable Justice Adeniyi Ademola. We also recovered two Apple iPads.”
Trial judge, Jude Okeke adjourned the trial on the request of the prosecution who informed the court that some witnesses were being threatened.
Justice Ademola is being tried by the government on allegations of corruption.
On Monday, a witness said Justice Ademola received a N8m luxury car from Joe Agi (SAN).