Police operatives have been left shocked after N105 million forfeited by Gift Ezenwa, the wife of Collins Ezenwa aka E-Money, a deceased notorious kidnapper, vanished from her bank account despite a no-debit order placed on the account.
E-Money until his death in January 2018 was a former police corporal turned billionaire kidnapper.
A Federal High Court, Owerri, Imo state had ruled the funds found in a fixed deposit account in a new-generation bank as proceed of crime and ordered it forfeited to the Federal Government.
As at the time the account was confiscated and had a lien placed on it, it had a balance of N105 million.
But a source said that after the conclusion of the case when the court gave the order of confiscation of E-Money’s assets, the account had been depleted to N6,800.
The source said the Inspector-General of Police Intelligence Response Team (IRT) is currently working to uncover how the funds vanished.
The source said, “We received intelligence reports about E-money’s criminal activities in October 2017, while he was a policeman, after one Emmanuel and David Ofong were abducted along Nsukka-Kogi Road, Enugu by a gang of kidnappers and a ransom of $2 million was paid for the release of one of the victims, David Ofong while the kidnappers held on to Emmanuel Ofong, demanding additional money.
“We went into the case and through the aid of advanced technology, we were able to establish that E-money was the man behind the kidnapping but we had difficulty arresting him then because he was always moving in and out of the country.
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“Shockingly, we heard, in 2018 that he had been killed alongside two members of his gang. But since Chief Emmanuel Ofong, who he kidnapped was still missing; we continued our case with the hope of arresting other members of his gang. In the process, we arrested a banker working for him and he informed us that his wife had a fixed deposit account credited with N100 million.
“We also arrested a property agent, who assisted him in buying his property. We looked further into his activities and discovered that he was operating a gang so sophisticated that his gang members were not close to themselves and none of them knew where he kept his victims after he had kidnapped them.
“He also conducted negotiations for ransom of his victims by himself which was usually in foreign currencies. We discovered that he gave his gang members whatever he liked as he had succeeded in preventing them from knowing how much he got for the operations. “We also discovered that E-money used, to a large extent, his police exposure in coordinating his criminal enterprise and he ended up acquiring so much money within a short period.
“Despite the October 2019 interim order of forfeiture, issued by the Federal High Court Owerri, to the Nigeria Police Force to confiscate all properties belonging to E-money, which included vehicles, buildings and the sum of N100million found in his wife, Gift Ezenwa’s account, the said N100million has been withdrawn completely.”