A Lagos State High Court has sentenced Mohammed Gobir to seven years in prison for stealing, obtaining under false pretence and possession of a fraudulent document.
Gobir was charged by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in March 2016 with 17 counts of stealing, forgery, and fraud.
He was arrested in September 2015 at his home in Ikoyi after a company called Afromedia accused him of stealing millions of naira and foreign currency.
According to EFCC, Gobir was introduced to Afromedia by their consultants in 2008, and he promised to invest N1 billion in the company and was made Chairman of the Business Development Committee.
Using the trust gained from this position, Gobir allegedly defrauded the company of multiple large sums of money. Among the fraudulent transactions were amounts totaling $3.5 million, N514 million, $2.1 million, and £51,000, purportedly for business expenses involving international investors.
He also reportedly told the company to collect $250 million, which he claimed was frozen in a UK bank by the British Anti-Money Laundering Agency.
He told the company he needed funds to obtain a “Waiver Certificate” for the release of the money.
One of the counts reads: “That you, Mohammed Gobir, a Non-Executive Director and Chairman of Business Development Committee of Afromedia Plc between January 2009 and December 2011 in Lagos within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court with intent to defraud obtained the sum of N514,457,151.87 (Five Hundred and Fourteen Million, Four Hundred and Fifty Seven Thousand, One Hundred and Fifty One Naira, Eighty Seven Kobo) from Afromedia Plc by falsely pretending to Afromedia Plc that the said sum of money represented the cost of facilitating and securing the sum of $70,000,000 (Seventy Million Dollars) from your account in NATWEST Bank, London, United Kingdom as your investment fund in Afromedia Plc out of the $250,000,000 (Two Hundred and Fifty Million United States Dollars) stashed in your account at NATWEST Bank, London, United Kingdom which pretence you Knew to be false and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 1(3) of the Advance Fee Fraud and Other Fraud Related Offences Act, No.14, 2006.”
Justice Adeniyi, in his ruling on Wednesday, found Gobir guilty and sentenced him to seven years imprisonment.
