By Abubakar Yunusa
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission is carrying out a probe into an alleged fraud, illegal forex transactions worth millions of dollars, tax evasion, and money laundering by the Founder, Xejet Airline, Emmanuel Iza and his British business partner, Ashay Mervyn.
The ongoing investigation followed a petition by a law firm, Gray Law Practice, on behalf of an anti-corruption group, the Anti-Corruption and Integrity Forum; documents exclusively obtained by our correspondent revealed.
The group, among other things, in a letter dated July 25, 2023, asked the EFCC to investigate Mr Iza for allegedly laundering money for politicians through his company Xejet Limited’s Access Bank dollar account – 0706809488 – via some Bureau de Change operators, as a middleman.
The petition party read, “It is our brief that Mr Emmanuel Iza simply called “the suspect” in some parts of this petition is the Founder/Chief Executive Officer of Xejet Limited, a commercial airline company recently registered in Nigeria. Available documents reveal that Mr Emmanuel lza conspired with other persons and companies (some of which are based in the United Kingdom) to carry out fraud, illegal forex transactions running into millions of dollars, tax evasion, money laundering and terrorism financing against the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
“From the records, the originator of all transactions and architect of the entire fraudulent scheme is Mr Emmanuel Iza. He uses proxies who were mostly Bureau De Change operators to clean very huge sums of money for top government functionaries, personalities and politicians (including senators, governers and so on). Usually, the suspect mop up stolen funds, sends them abroad and simply wait to receive bogus credit alerts from foreign countries, especially United Kingdom.
“Tracking of financial exhibits revealed that various utilised Bureau De Change operators were paid forex in cash by Mr Emmanuel Iza. The operators in turn pay to a middleman (VALWORLD PIERRE GLOBAL SERVICES/Okoye Valentine Chukwuemeka, a suspected internet fraudster also popularly referred to as “yahoo boy”) in Naira who holds down the cash for the foreign counterparts.
“In the end, it was the foreign counterpart who sent back forex into the USD Access Bank account (0706809488) of Xejet Limited, which has Mr Emmanuel Iza as a major signatory. The essence of routing the forex through different channels is to prevent the anti-graft agencies from tracing the transactions to Mr Emmanuel Iza whose stock in trade is forex fraud for many years under the pretext of business dealings.
“Investigations by our client further revealed that the total sum of NGN 1,148,379,623.88 was paid to the middleman from the various Bureau de Change operators which was to be payment for the exchange sum of $1,500,000; at the exchange rate of NNN765. Coincidentally, the NGN765 happened to be the average black market exchange rate in Nigeria between July 6 to 8, 2023. Furthermire, our client learnt that only the wam of $1,000,000 was paid to Mr Emmanuel Iza via the Xejet Limited Access Bank USD account 0706809488 on July 7, 2023. It does appear that the forex sender has eloped with the remaining $500,000.”
When contacted, the spokesperson for the EFCC, Wilson Uwujaren noted that his office was yet to be notified of the development, adding that the commission receives hundreds of petitions from time to time.
“I’m not aware of this particular petition as nothing of such has been sent to my office. The commission receives hundreds of petitions from time to time, and it’s not being handled by my office,” Uwujaren said.
However, affirming the petition in an official letter dated Thursday, July 27, 2023, the EFCC said, “This is to certify that the petition with the following details was received by the commission on this day. Thursday 27th July, 2023 at 11:34 am.
“Petition number: EFCC/PET/HQR/4820/2023. Title: Petition against Mr Emmanuel Iza. Submitted by: Graylaw Practice LP.”
