Princess Kama, the erstwhile business partner of Benjamin Joseph, owner of Citadel Oracle Concepts Limited, an Ibadan-based ICT retail firm, has broken her silence over a long-drawn dispute involving a N170m contract with the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) which has seen Mr. Benjamin Joseph standing trial for falsely petitioning the Federal Government, alleging that the Zinox Chairman, Leo Stan Ekeh and others colluded in defrauding it and his company in executing the said contract.
Princess
disclosed that Benjamin is an ingrate who attempted to get her support in
diverting Mr. Ekeh’s company fund and joining in a smear campaign against Mr.
Ekeh, while also expressing surprise that the matter was still a subject of
debate in the courts and in the media.
‘‘It
has been nearly a decade. For those who do not know, I stood trial in this case
along with Mr. Onny Igbokwe, owner of AD’MAS Digital Technologies Ltd. Our only
offence was trying to help someone who was my business partner back then and
who also wanted me to marry him but whom I rejected. However, I thank God that
justice prevailed in the end after the case was tried fully on its merits. We
(I and Mr. Onny Igbokwe) were both discharged and acquitted by an FCT High
Court on 24th February 2021 presided by Honourable Justice Senchi in
Charge No. FCT/HC/CR/244/2018, with a sum of N20m awarded as damages against
the complainant, Mr. Benjamin Joseph, for false and malicious petitioning and
prosecution, and to serve as a deterrent against persons seeking to lodge false
petitions with the investigative agencies. So, I am surprised to discover only recently
that he is still going around sponsoring all manner of fake write-upon the same
case in which he has a subsisting judgment awarded against him.’’
While
stating that the contract in question was awarded as far back as 2012, Princess
revealed that Mr. Ekeh was not involved in any way and neither was his wife
because the value of the contract wasn’t that much. She added that it was a
business transaction between Citadel Oracle Concepts Ltd. which she was
representing at the time and Technology Distributions Ltd., (TD Africa), one of
the companies which Mr. Ekeh founded. Furthermore, she added that TD had indeed
aided Citadel in executing the contract by extending an interest-free credit
facility to it, without which it would have been extremely difficult to deliver
as the banks were unwilling to fund the contract and Citadel was not
financially strong to fund the business. Consequently, she stated that her
conscience and integrity would not permit her to allowBenjamin to continue in
his ongoing campaign, which she described as ‘a gross act of ingratitude and an
attempt to arm-twist or blackmail Mr. Ekeh for no reason’.
‘‘I
have kept a studied silence over the years in this case for obvious reasons.
But I must confess that I was shocked to learn recently that this matter is
still being reported actively in the media as if it happened today. For the
benefit of those in the dark, I aided Benjamin Joseph for a while after he came
to me in his time of difficulty in his business. I helped him bid for many
contracts using my experience and contacts but when we won part of the FIRS
contract, it was hard securing a bank loan to fund the business.
‘‘We
approached TD like other vendors did. TD is the biggest authorized distributors
of HP and other OEMs in the country. However, Benjamin’s company was rejected because Citadel Oracle Concepts Ltd. had no credit history with them. Mr.Onny
Igbokwe, whose company, AD’MAS Digital Technologies Ltd, also through me got part of the same contract from FIRS had been a long-time trading partner of
TD’s, agreed to guarantee Citadel for the credit facility after meeting with him
(Benjamin) in Lagos. This was how we were able to get TD to fund the contract
on our behalf, the same as they did for other vendors who won similar lots for the
FIRS contract.
‘‘Joseph
gave me a duly signed letter of authority and a copy of his international
passport and other corporate documents of his company, Citadel Oracle Concepts
Limited, empowering me to act on his behalf in bidding for and executing the
contract, and this letter was submitted to the FIRS. He also swore on oath in
his Witness Statement on Oath in the civil case at Lagos High Court where he
admitted this letter and other documents that he gave to me. His Statement on Oath
is before the court, so he cannot deny it.
‘‘The
account opened for the disbursement of the proceeds of the contract was also
approved by him as he issued a duly signed Board resolution for it, which a
forensic analysis report has confirmed was not forged. No official of TD was
responsible for this. In order to safeguard their funds, however, TD insisted
that two of its staff, Mr. Chris Ozims, and Mrs. Shade Oyebode, would be signatories
to the account. This was the only security held by TD for payment for the
laptops supplied to Citadel on credit. We agreed to this and TD swiftly
delivered all the laptops complete to the FIRS on our behalf. When the money
for the contract was paid, TD duly deducted the pre-agreed sum for the laptops
supplied on our behalf. This was when the trouble started,’’ she stated.
Revealing
that Benjamin had wanted to divert the entire funds received, Princess
disclosed that she resisted the move, placing her in the line of her erstwhile
business partner’s fire.
‘‘I
refused Joseph’s attempts to divert the funds because my integrity was at
stake. Here was a company that supported us with an interest-free facility,
despite having no prior business relationship with them and whom Joseph now
wanted to cheat. Mind you, Mr. Igbokwe was also a guarantor for Citadel.
Therefore, going along with Joseph’s plan would have hurt a lot of innocent
people. So, I resisted it.
‘‘This
infuriated him and he demanded to take all the profits from the contract which
I also resisted because we had a pre-agreed sharing percentage. Chief Afe
Babalola, who represented him at the time, tried to intervene by asking me to
concede a larger portion of the profit to him but Benjamin was greedy and
wanted all. It was at this point that he turned around to claim that he was not
aware of the contract, that his company was fraudulently used to execute the
contract with a fake Board resolution, and that no single laptop was supplied. Why
didn’t he report to the Police earlier if indeed a fraud was perpetrated on his
company?”
‘‘He
petitioned the Police Special Fraud Unit Lagos (SFU), the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), and later the Vice President, Prof. Yemi
Osinbajo. But where he failed is when he accused Mr. Ekeh, his wife, and other
staff of TD of involvement in the alleged fraud. It was strange because neither
Mr. Ekeh nor his wife had ever met or transacted any personal business with Citadel
or Mr. Joseph or myself. TD is a very big company that I transacted with
officers at the middle level. Our transaction value was small to influence our
meeting with Mrs. Ekeh. At this point, he started engaging some unscrupulous media
persons to embark on a campaign of calumny against Mr. Ekeh, thinking that he
will get Mr. Ekeh’s attention to pay more. I am not sure who gave him the idea that Mr.
Ekeh has a lot of money and could give more money just to have peace. But this
failed.
‘‘Thankfully,
all the investigations by the Police SFU and the EFCC proved that Benjamin was
spreading falsehood as forensic analysis of the documents we used to bid for
the contract showed that they were duly signed by him. Also, the FIRS confirmed
that all the laptops were duly supplied. The investigations equally exonerated
all the staff of TD and Mr. Ekeh, who was not even involved in any way with the
transaction. Sadly though, the EFCC
charged me and Mr. Onny Igbokwe to court due to the internal issues we were having with Benjamin in Charge No. CR/244/2018 before the FCT High Court.
However, after a full trial that lasted for more than two years, we were
eventually discharged and acquitted in 2021, as earlier stated. The judgment of
the court clearly dismissed all the allegations of Mr. Benjamin Joseph and
awarded the sum of N20 million as damages against him for false information. It
is instructive to note that the staff of TD only testified as prosecution
witnesses in that case. Neither the EFCC investigative report nor the judgment
of the court indicted them in any way. The judgment is now a public document,
so anyone is free to go and read it to know the truth of the matter.
‘‘It
is sad that an innocent man who knew nothing about this transaction is being
dragged into this matter, maybe with a view to destroying him. It is evident that Benjamin
is most probably being backed by Mr. Ekeh’s competitors as he has no capacity
for this. Their intention is to see Mr. Ekeh appear in court to rubbish his
image. But to what ends? I consider it an insult that the founder of a company
that funded a contract for us and many other bidders is being accused of
fraudulently converting a paltry sum of N170m. This is clearly a case of biting
the fingers that fed you and one of the reasons it is hard to get assistance in
today’s business world.
‘‘I
must also express my disappointment, especially when I read that Femi Falana
took on the brief of defending Mr. Benjamin Joseph who is still facing another
criminal trial on this same case, without even as much as an attempt to probe
the facts or background. He can reach out to his fellow SAN, Chief Afe
Babalola, for instance, to understand or verify the disagreement that led to
this juncture.
‘‘As
I said earlier, Mr. Benjamin Joseph reported this case to both the Police SFU
and the EFCC. These are the only investigative agencies who investigated this
case and the only places we made written statements. If he claims that the SFU
Report and the EFCC Report indicted Mr. Ekeh and his wife and other staff of
TD, let him obtain copies and make them public instead of making noise. How can
the SFU report have indicted Mr. Ekeh or his wife or any staff of TD when it
was the SFU Investigative Officer that testified against Mr. Benjamin Joseph in
criminal case No. CR/216/16 that the Police brought against him for false
information?
‘‘I
am aware that he says he is relying on a certain report by a certain Special
Enquiry Bureau of the Police to whom he wrote a petition in 2015. We were
neither invited by the Special Enquiry Bureau nor did we make any statement to
them. This is what he is carrying about as a report. Let him present any letter of invitation from
the Bureau to any of us, including Mr. Ekeh, his wife, and the staff of TD, or
any statement any of us made to the Bureau. How can there be a report where the
‘suspects’ were neither invited nor made statements? What Benjamin Joseph is
hiding from the public is that the Police Force Headquarters Abuja, by a
subsequent comprehensive report dated 1st December 2020, discredited
and disclaimed the so-called report of the Bureau as baseless and invalid, as
it was based only on the statement of Mr. Joseph without hearing from the other
parties.
‘‘The
Police report of 1st December 2021 emphatically said that the only
investigation and authentic report was the one done by the Police SFU at Lagos.
I believe that it is this invalid and discredited report that Femi Falana used
to apply for fiat in May 2022, as they are claiming, and they also
conveniently hid from the Attorney General the fact that there is a subsisting judgment
of the FCT High Court that has dismissed the allegations of Mr. Benjamin Joseph.
It was after these hidden facts were made available to the Attorney-General
that he gave the Police a letter in June 2022 to rather continue the
prosecution of Mr. Benjamin Joseph to a logical conclusion, thereby reversing
himself on the fiat. So, I believe that Mr. Ekeh was right to say that there is
no case pending against him or his wife or staff of TD, or any of us. I know
that since there is a judgment by a competent court dismissing as false the set
of facts forming the allegation of Mr. Benjamin Joseph, those facts and
allegation cannot be used again to try me or any other party mentioned in the
allegation, as long as that judgment subsists. Whatever charge that is filed,
based on those allegations, is dead on arrival. My lawyers are taking steps to
strike it out. So, the fact that we are challenging it does not mean that
anyone, including Mr. Ekeh, is defending the charge, as I hear Mr. Benjamin
Joseph say in his press statement. It is only consequential that it be struck
out since the basis of the fiat has been overtaken by events.
‘‘Lastly,
it is worthy to note that based on the letter of the Attorney-General to the
Police to continue with the prosecution of Mr. Benjamin Joseph to a logical
conclusion, his trial continues on 3rd November 2022 before
Honourable Justice Peter Kekemeke of the FCT High Court. If he believes in his
innocence, he should present his case in court and stop this media trial and
hype. Why is he afraid to conclude his defense and be cross-examined after opening
his defense for over two years but would rather be running to the press to
curry undue public sympathy and tarnish innocent people’s image?’’ she
queried.
‘‘In
all these, I am just a victim of someone who repays good with evil. Be that as
it may, I will never be weary of doing good and I count it all joy.’’
Princess Kama
21/10/2022
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