Shortly after news broke that Dr. Oba Otudeko, the chairman of Honeywell Group and the former chairman of First Bank Plc, was about to be arraigned for fraud by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, or EFCC, he reportedly departed Nigeria.
It was discovered that Otudeko departed the nation on Thursday night through one of Nigeria’s land borders. Security personnel revealed that a family member dropped him off at the Nigeria-Benin border.
In the Federal High Court in Lagos, Oba Otudeko and three other people were charged with 13 counts by the anti-graft commission. Allegations of illegally securing a loan of ₦30 billion under false pretenses are at the heart of the charges.
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The co-defendants include Anchorage Limited, a business purportedly associated with Otudeko; Soji Akintayo, a former board member of Honeywell Flour Mills Plc; and Stephen Olabisi Onasanya, a former Group Managing Director of First Bank.
Otudeko and his co-defendants obtained many loan tranches from First Bank, totaling ₦12.3 billion, ₦5.2 billion, ₦6.2 billion, ₦6.1 billion, and ₦1.5 billion, according to the EFCC. It has been revealed that these monies were acquired by pretending to be issued to other companies.
