Plea Bargain Deal : Cecilia Ibru Yet To Pay N16.1bn Balance – AMCON

BEVERLY HILLS, March 17, (THEWILL) – Indication emerged Monday that the Managing Director of the defunct Oceanic Bank Plc, Mrs. Cecilia Ibru, is yet to completely honour the plea bargain deal she entered into with the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON).

This is coming four years after the deal was sealed as part of the soft-landing measures for the embattled Ibru through the Office of the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) after she was convicted on October 8, 2010.

Acting Managing Director of AMCON, Mrs. Foluke Dosunmu, disclosed this at a meeting of AMCON, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) with the Senate Committee on Drugs, Narcotics and Financial Crimes (EFCC) in the National Assembly.

Her disclosure was in response to a petition written to the committee by some stakeholders that AMCON had failed to remit proceeds of Ibru's loot to shareholders of both Oceanic and Ecobank which later acquired Ecobank.

Dosunmu, who said AMCON was neither owning Oceanic nor Ecobank, said the plea bargain deal was gazetted on October 20, 2010 and Mrs. Ibru still has N16.1billion to pay from the entire amount.

According to Dosunmu, a total sum of N570 billion was injected into Oceanic Bank to save it from collapse and AMCON had not taken up Mrs. Ibru over the N16.1 billion balance because she had not shown her unwillingness to pay it.

“The assets which were gazetted were forfeited to AMCON. It was not meant to be managed by AMCON but forfeited to it. They are two different things. AMCON has the ownership of the money. The first set of funds paid to Oceanic Bank was non-performing loan. The second was depositors' fund illicitly acquired by the institution. One point we made was that no depositor would lose his fund. Ibru entered into plea bargain with the AGF and not with EFCC. The court order forfeiting Ibru's assets to AMCON was given on October 10, 2010.

“By this order, AMCON became the beneficial owner of the assets by virtue of the forfeiture. We were not part of the plea bargain. We paid N83 billion to Oceanic Bank. That was what we took the liberty to do although there is a shortfall of N16.1 billion yet to be paid by Mrs. Ibru. After parting with such money, we are not supposed to render any account to Oceanic Bank. What was owed had been paid. The assets were meant to either be in AMCON custody or sold by it. We are not liable to render accounts to Oceanic Bank or Ecobank.

“The list of assets gazetted is different from what was reported in the newspaper. It did not include an aircraft and we never got any cash. We have evidence of sales recovered from Ibru. We provided over N300 billion to shore up depositors' funds. The recovery of shareholders' funds is not the responsibility of AMCON. All that was done was to ensure the safety of shareholders' funds. EFCC did not recover any property from Ibru. There is no issue of remittance of proceeds from Oceanic to Ecobank because AMCON had injected N570 billion into Oceanic bank,” Dosunmu explained.