Shady businessman Jimoh Ibrahim is under orders to report back on December 10, 2013 to the Special Enforcement Unit of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), SaharaReporters has been authoritatively told.
Shady businessman Jimoh Ibrahim is under orders to report back on December 10, 2013 to the Special Enforcement Unit of the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), SaharaReporters has been authoritatively told.
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The development comes a day after Mr. Ibrahim released a deceptive statement to the media claiming that officers of the enforcement unit never arrested him. SaharaReporters had reported exclusively yesterday that Mr. Ibrahim was picked up by FIRS and interrogated in the agency’s office in Abuja.
Sources at FIRS told SaharaReporters that the controversial businessman not only gave a written statement to the agency but was also granted bail after signing a bail bond consistent with his tax fraud liability.
Mr. Ibrahim is to return to the FIRS on December 10, while a civil case instituted against him before a Lagos High Court relating to his tax liability of N1.2 billion will proceed on December 11, 2013. Our sources within the FIRS said criminal charges are pending because Mr. Ibrahim claimed he sold 48% of his shares to UBA Capital, and that the tax liabilities had been passed on to UBA Capital.
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An investigator with the FIRS who is involved in investigating Mr. Ibrahim’s case disclosed that the agency found this latest assertion to be completely false and unfounded as UBA capital only had a creditor/debtor relationship with the shady businessman. “The bad loans Mr. Ibrahim owed UBA capital has since been taken over by AMCON . Mr. Ibrahim is solely responsible for the unpaid taxes” , he added.
Also, a spokesman for UBA told our correspondent that UBA Capital had become a separate entity after the Central Bank of Nigeria directed all banks to divest from non-banking activities.
Mr. Ibrahim was arrested yesterday in his hotel room in Abuja after weeks of evading officers of FIRS’ enforcement unit. He was interrogated over tax fraud running into billions of naira.
As a businessman, he shot into prominence during the years of President Olusegun Obasanjo. He is believed to be part of the inner circle of associates handpicked by Mr. Obasanjo to benefit from corrupt enrichment schemes that characterized the Obasanjo Presidency. Mr. Ibrahim’s businesses, including Air Nigeria and Newswatch magazine which he bought under cloudy circumstances, have either declined or failed over the last few years.
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