EFCC arrests CAC official, 3 others for alleged forgery
ABUJA— No fewer than four members of a forgery syndicate including an official of the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) were on Wednesday arrested in Abuja by operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
The suspects — Emmanuel Nwaroh, Akeju Tolulope, Abiodun Awolumate and Aliu Abdullai — were arrested following a report that they run a ring that helps people to forge CAC documents in exchange for large sums of money.
Trouble began for the syndicate when CAC reported the case of two lawyers suspected to be involved in the forgery of a Certificate of Registration of Increase in Share Capital of an engineering firm in Abuja.
Acting on the report, EFCC operatives arrested the two lawyers. One of them, Rotimi Ogunjide, said he was contacted to do the job but gave it to another lawyer to help out due to his busy schedule. His statement led to the arrest of the second lawyer, Ihejirika George .
Ihejirika in his statement said he also gave the job to one Emmanuel Nwaroh who he claimed he met when the latter was on industrial training at the CAC. His own statement led to the arrest of Emmanuel within the premises of the CAC. The 25-year-old corps member posted to Bauchi State confessed that he was given the job of forging the Share Capital Certificate of the company but that he also gave the job to one Emeka who is now at large.
EFCC operatives were able to establish that the syndicate was contacted when the said company wanted to bid for a contract and was told to have its Share Capital base increased from 100 million to 250 million units. The company then contacted Ogunjide to help process the document with the Corporate Affairs Commission.
Upon receiving the original certificate which contained the company’s share base of 100 million units, the lawyer thereafter contacted another lawyer, George, who in turn contacted Emmanuel to help hasten the process since he once served as an IT student at the CAC.
In his statement, Emmanuel told operatives that George promised to pay him N240,000 for the job. The amount was later paid into his bank account.
