Malabu scam: Adoke asks court to restrain FG from executing fresh arrest warrant against him

A former Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of
Justice, Mr. Mohammed Adoke (SAN), has urged the High Court of the
Federal Capital Territory in Jabi, Abuja, to restrain the police
and the Department of State Services, representing the Federal
Government, from enforcing a fresh warrant of arrest issued against
him on April 29, 2019.

Adoke made this plea in an ex parte application filed on his
behalf by his lawyer, Chief Mike Ozekhome (SAN) on June 19,
2019.

The application has been scheduled for hearing before Justice
Danladi Senchi on Monday (today July 1).

The judge had initially on April 17, 2019 issued an arrest
warrant on Adoke, and other five suspects named in the charges
bordering on the $2.1bn Malabu Oil scam.

He had issued the order based on an ex parte application by the
prosecuting agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission.

While moving the application for the initial arrest warrant,
EFCC’s lawyer, Mr. Aliyu Yusuf, urged the court to issue the order
of arrest to enable the commission to apprehend the Malabu Oil
suspects and bring them before the court for arraignment on the
charges instituted against them since 2016.

Yusuf noted that apart from the charges pending in the court,
there were other two sets pending against them before the Federal
High Court in Abuja.

According to the EFCC, the charges bordered on fraudulent
allocation of the Oil Prospecting Licence 245 and money laundering
involving the sum of about $1.2bn, forgery of bank documents,
bribery and corruption.

Adoke has been living outside Nigeria since 2015, when the
President Goodluck Jonathan administration that he served as the
AGF left office.

The prosecution has not been able to apprehend the former
minister and the rest of the suspects since 2016 when the charges
were instituted against them.

Apart from Adoke, others affected by the court’s arrest warrant
were a former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Dan Etete, Raph
Wezels, Casula Roberto, Pujato Stefeno and Burrato Sebastino, and
Aliyu Abubakar.

But Adoke, on April 23, 2019, through his lawyer, filed an
application urging the court to set aside the said arrest warrant
on the grounds that it was issued against him “without jurisdiction
and should to be set aside”.

In his ex parte application filed before the same Justice Senchi
on June 26, 2019, Adoke complained that the trio of the
Inspector-General of Police, the Commissioner of Police, Interpol,
and the DSS, had gone ahead to issue a fresh arrest warrant against
him on June 29, despite his motion on notice dated April 24, 2019,
challenging the earlier warrant of arrest issued against him by the
court.

“The warrant of arrest issued against the applicant by the
respondents infringes upon the fundamental rights of the
applicant,” part of the grounds of the application read.

The applicant, therefore, prayed for “An interim order of
injunction restraining the respondents… from arresting or
detaining, or from further directing the arrest and detention or
doing any other act or from continuing to do any other act that is
tantamount to self-help or keeping in their custody of the
applicant, on the basis of the fresh warrant of arrest issued on of
April 29, 2019, against the applicant, at the behest of the
respondents (representing the Federal Government of Nigeria)…”

The applicant sought as an alternative prayer, an order
directing parties “to maintain status quo ante bellum as of April
16, 2019, pending the hearing and final determination of the notice
of application filed along with this application.”

The alleged $1.2bn scam involved the transfer of the OPL 245
purportedly from Malabu Oil and Gas Limited to Shell Nigeria
Exploration Production Co. Limited and Nigeria Agip Exploration
Limited.

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