Mike Amadi Nigerian fraudsters judge affirmed a 10-year jail sentence

The Supreme Court has affirmed a 10-year jail sentence passed on a fraudster, Mike Amadi.In the judgment delivered by Justices Christopher Chukwuma- Eneh, Mahmud Mohammed, Aloma M. Mukhtar and others on Friday, December 19, 2008 in Abuja, the Supreme Court judges upheld the decision of the Lagos High Court and that of the Appeal Court in sentencing Amadi to 10-year imprisonment.
Amadi was first convicted and sentenced to 10 years jail term on March 30, 2005 by a Lagos High Court, Ikeja under Justice Morenike Obadina.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had arraigned him in 2004 before the Lagos High Court on a five-count charge of obtaining by false pretence, forgery and uttering of forged documents.
EFCC's Head of Media and Publicity Femi Babafemi said in a statement last night that the case was the first suit of the anti-graft body to get to the apex court and that the judgment was a landmark ruling.Not satisfied with the judgment of the high court, Amadi had headed for the Court of Appeal where his case was dismissed. He later proceeded to the apex court. The accused was said to have sometime in February 2004 at No 15 Irepodun Street, Akiode, Ogba, Lagos, with the intent to defraud, attempted to obtain the sum of $125,000 from Fabio Fajans by sending a payment schedule containing false pretence with a request for money to enable him process the transfer of $2.5million being the contract sum for generators Fajans purportedly supplied to the Federal Government for the 2003 All African Games.
He was also accused of falsely presenting to the said Fajans that the said sum of $125,000 represented the five per cent processing fees of the total contract sum of $2.5 million.Amadi was further said to have on or about January 6, 2004, with the intention to defraud and in order to facilitate his plan to obtain by false pretence from Fajans, forged a Central Bank of Nigeria International Payment Schedule purported to have been issued by the CBN. All the offences were committed contrary to Sections 5 (1) ,8 (b) 1 (3) of the Advance Fee Fraud and other Fraud Related Offences Act Cap A6 Vol. 1 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004 and Section 467 (2) (2) of the Criminal code Cap C17 Vol. 2 Laws of the Lagos State of Nigeria 2003.
In their judgment, the Supreme Court justices concurred with the learned appellate court judges that the appeal was unmeritorious and should be dismissed.
They contended that the appellant’s arguments that before a conviction could be sustained for offence of attempt to obtain by false pretences, there must be a fraudulent pretence contained in a document from an accused to another identifiable person was untenable as Sections 1, 5(1) and 8 of the Advance Fee Fraud and other Fraud Related Offences Act No 62 of 1999 proved the charges against the appellant.
Furthermore, they pointed out the admissibility of the appellant’s statement, which accepted that the prosecution (EFCC) took his phone, computer printer, etc in which were found incriminating materials.
On the appellant’s submission that the presence of proper parties had not been met because, according to Section 211 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, only the Attorney-General of the state or an officer of his department has the power to institute and undertake criminal proceedings against a person before any court of law in Nigeria, the apex court justices concurred with respondent’s counsel that Nigeria is a Federation and that the Attorney-General’s power under Section 174 and 211 could not be questioned by even the courts.
They contended that because Nigeria operates a cooperative federalism, some agencies such as EFCC are common for both federal and state governments.
In their separate judgments, the justices said: “The findings of facts which are now concurrent are neither perverse nor unsupported by evidence. The law is trite that no appellant court will have any justification to upturn judgments that are the products of admissible evidence and based on reasonable conclusions.”
The case was thereafter dismissed and the judgments of the trial and the appeal courts affirmed