Abdulrasheed Maina
Nigeria’s secret police, the State Security Service (SSS), once
made curious huge cash transfers into a bank account associated with a
former chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms,
Abdulrasheed Maina, Premium Times exclusively reports.
The uncovering of the payments, investigators say, suggests Maina
and the security agency had been in an unholy relationship for a while.
It was earlier reported how Maina received security protection from
operatives of the Nigeria Police Force and the SSS who also allegedly
provided a hideout for him.
Maina is on the run following moves by the Economic and Financial
Crimes Commission to charge him to court for alleged N2 billion fraud.
Reports revealed that Maina has a history of using bankers and
other intermediaries to launder most of the money he allegedly embezzled
from the pension funds.
Sometimes in 2011, while serving as chairman of the pension task
force, Maina, using his banker sibling, Khalid Ali Biu, opened a
corporate bank account in the name of Cluster Logistics Limited
domiciled at Fidelity Bank.
Biu, who was a staff of the bank, was both the bank’s account
officer as well as a director of the fictitious company, according to
bank and company registration documents sighted by this newspaper.
Bank papers, including mandate card for the Cluster Logistics account also identified Mr. Maina as a signatory to the account.
Investigators said the account had over N500 million cash inflow that were mostly cash deposits made between 2011 and 2013.
Withdrawals from the accounts were also largely in cash. Some of
the money, according to investigators, were also changed into dollars.
Curiously, however, among deposits into the accounts were three
payments made over a period of one year by no other than the SSS, under
its preferred name of Department of State Services (DSS).
Bank documents show that the security outfit paid a total of over
N152 million. The first tranche of over N61 million was paid on November
16, 2011 and the last made on November 14, 2012.
One of the deposits shows that it was made in the name of “DSS
Pension Biometrics”. It is unclear if Cluster Logistics offered any
services to the SSS to warrant any payment.
The discovery of the account details, according to a source,
“unsettled the SSS despite the EFCC’s effort at downplaying the matter
in the spirit of inter-agency esprit de corp.
“Now that the whole case is being revisited it is important for
the president to order forensic investigation into the SSS pension
department,” he said.
Another EFCC official, who asked not to be named, said before the
recent controversy over Mr. Maina’s matter, the commission was already
preparing to arraign some of the bankers who aided the dismissed civil
servant to allegedly launder billions.
The SSS could not be reached for comments on this story Wednesday night. The agency has no official spokesperson.
EFCC’s spokesperson , Wilson Uwujaren, did not respond to multiple telephone calls.
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