Crime

FBI Report And Mompha’s iPhone Admitted In Money Laundering Trial

Published

1 year ago

Sep 19, 2023.

Eko Hot Blog reports that a Lagos Special Offences Court has admitted a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) report and Mompha’s iPhone in evidence in his money laundering trial.

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The trial judge, Mojisola Dada, admitted the report during Mompha’s trial in absentia, on alleged money laundering brought against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

Mompha is accused of laundering over N6 billion. He pleaded not guilty to all the counts and was granted bail, but the court later revoked the bail due to his absence at the trial.

At the resumed trial, EFCC’s counsel, Sulaiman Suleiman, who led the FBI’s agent, Ayorinde Solademi in evidence, tendered documents, which included a letter by the EFCC to the United States of America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and a report by the Bureau.

However, the defendant’s counsel, Kolawole Salami, objected to the admissibility of the documents from the United States Consulate without certification. He said the documents are not certified true copies, hence, should not be admitted.

The trial judge, however, overruled Salami, and upheld the position of the prosecution that the documents were original, and require no certification.

During cross-examination by the defence counsel, Solademi, who works at the Legal Attaché Office of the FBI in Nigeria, told the court that he retrieved an iPhone belonging to Mompha with a Faraday bag.

According to him, the FBI’s forensic operations revealed that Mompha’s iPhone was used in sending account details to a United Arab Emirates (UAE) telephone number, searching for Swift Codes of a bank and had a compromised Microsoft 365 account.