Following the comments of readers concerning the genuineness of the above-reported matter I hereby present to our readers verifiable documentation of this matter before some of our regulatory and law enforcement agencies.
I reproduce below the cover letter of submissions made to the EFCC as far back as October 2008 and the responses so far received:
16th October 2008.
The Executive Chairman
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission
15A Awolowo Road
Ikoyi
Lagos
Dear Madam: REPORTING CORPORATE MANSLAUGHTER IN FOOTWEAR AND ACCESSORIES MANUFACTURING AND DISTRIBUTION PLC (FORMERLY BATA NIG PLC).
I hereby wish to officially file in my petition concerning the above-stated matter for your urgent and necessary action.
My names are Mohammed Al-Amin Yusuf, a citizen of Nigeria, born in Zaria on the 29th of September 1960. I have an M.Sc. in Economics and have worked in the corporate environment since my graduation in 1986.
Precisely on the 22nd of May 2006 I was offered employment in the above mentioned organization in the Marketing and Sales Department as Head of Institutional Sales. In the last two and a half years I have occupied various positions including Head of Brands and Corporate Planning, Manager Industrial Sales and the most recent as Business Manager and Chief Operating Officer of FAMARUBA LTD-a supposedly wholly owned subsidiary of the company situated in Benin, Edo State.
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I wish to enumerate in as concise a manner as possible the following key points of my petition:
1.) Right from the very first few months of my engagement I began to increasingly notice some anomalies in the operations of the company. These anomalies had bearing on the way and manner valuable landed properties of the company were being systematically dispensed of. There was no transparency in the transactions and due processes as well as international best practices were completely ignored. On closer examination I began to notice a modus operandi that permeates the entire process of managing the company. There was an observable absence of responsibility on the part of managers concerning the results of operations. No clear cut apportioning of tasks was discernible and no schedules of duty and authority is in place with the consequence that results from operations left far much to be desired. All this was happening side by side with a very robust procurement system being directly funded and sponsored by the chairman in the person of Chief (Mrs.) O.O. Olakunri.
2.) There is in place a very elaborate system of money laundering, over-invoicing of procurement and assets stripping. This system exists for the sole purpose of feeding the rapacious appetite of a clique that stop at nothing to feed themselves fat on the collective wealth of the company’s shareholders, workers and other stakeholders.
The system works by patronage. Several companies are involved chief amongst them are Oxwell Ltd., which is directly involved in procurement of leather from Kenya. By his own admission, the MD and chief collaborator in these despicable acts, Dr. Dan Orere, agrees that there has been within the last six months, a three-fold or 300% increase in the price of imported leather without a corresponding increase in the price of finished goods in a company that is set up to produce wealth for its owners!
To buttress my submission above it should be noted that only her blood relative, Mr. Kola Adesigbin, handles the importation of leather even though he is not the procurement manager! Both the Procurement Manager and the Manager in charge of Logistics and Stores do not see the details of these transactions. They are restricted to merely filing and treating invoices presented to them.
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3.) In the last 7 years since she took over the company, Chief Olakunri has refused to hold any Annual General Meeting (AGM) which by the regulatory requirement of the Securities and Exchange Commission for Listing of PLC’s, should be held mandatorily every year. In direct violation of the CAMA, there has been a consistent plagiarisation of company assets which in the last few years has led to the total impoverishment of the company. Landed properties worth billions of Naira have been sold without due process and at fractions of their actual market values. For example in Kano a huge property located at the central commercial district of Kano called Bello Road (near the popular Singer Market) whose current market value is conservatively above 800 Million Naira was sold for less than 80-Million! Similar transactions in Lagos Island at Abibu Oki Street, Enugu, Port Harcourt and Aba have equally been carried out. The properties are usually sold privately to proxies of the chairman whom she uses to transfer values to herself. After such transactions have taken place, the chairman then "loans’’ the money to the company through her private company, Executive Nominees Ltd. I enclose a list of properties that have been dispensed of in similar fashion covering the period 2006 to date. An exhaustive list of the properties sold off in the last nine years will make all concerned to marvel at the magnitude of such prime assets stripped off.
4.) In the area of money laundering there is need to stress the fact that many accounts opened in the name of the company are being used for transactions that have no direct relationship with the company. There is a need to investigate the relationship between the banks where the Educational Trust Fund (ETF) make deposits and the opening of accounts by FAMAD PLC. Using their positions as Chairman and Managing Director respectively, Chief (Mrs.) Olakunri and Dr. Dan Orere have misused the mandate of the company to open and operate bank accounts, many of them with domiciliary account components in hard currency without the transactions passing through the manufacturing and procurement books of the company. One of the banks being used for these transactions is Intercontinental Bank where only one account out of three opened in the name of the company is being reported in the books of the company! Using her accounting knowledge and position as a one-time President of ICAN, she has continued to manipulate the Company's accounts to hide a huge turnover running into billions of naira in the last several years. The MD even boasted recently that FAMAD’s problem is not money since according to him the chairman is capable of bringing in billions of naira to support the company operations. He further claimed that in the last 3 years since he joined the company he has assisted her in “washing” over 5 billion naira! What makes such a claim objectionable is the fact that the company itself is so poor and its operations so sluggish that it has hardly been able to attain 100M naira turnover per annum in the last 7 years! This is the major reason why the shareholders have been kept in limbo in the last 7 years without annual accounts being released not to talk of calling an AGM.
5.) Little wonder that recently the company’s Vice Chairman and Director in the person of Sir Emenyonu Chima wrote to Messrs. Akintola Williams & Deloitte who are the External Auditors of the company complaining about the lack of transparency in the record keeping and accounting reports of the company. In his e-mail to the accounting firm titled: ‘AUDIT ALARM,' Sir Chima seriously warned them not to collaborate with the Chairman and MD to falsify the accounts of the company. In response to the above warning, the audit firm replied by an official disclaimer to all the company directors concerning the state of the accounts. They summarized their submissions by stating several headings in the records submitted by the management to them which contained dubious information. This includes third party transactions, suppliers and others where insufficient information was given. The audit firm concluded their professional disclaimer by categorically stating that the source of the lapses in the records of the company could be ascribed to either accounting error or fraud.
The duo of the chairman and the MD has made several attempts to get the Board of Directors to endorse the accounts without success. This is largely due to the lone voice of Sir Chima who never hesitated to mention to the other directors the legal consequences of their complicity with such obvious case of fraud against the company and its stakeholders. All the directors of the company are material witnesses to the facts enumerated here. They should be contacted for possible and more detailed information on other crimes since they have all been there several years before me. Perhaps they have all along been prisoners of conscience and may accept an opportunity to speak out.
6.) As matters stand today it is obvious that unless the matter is officially reported for full investigation the lives of several people could be in jeopardy. I have advised Sir Chima on several occasions to be careful in his movements and interactions with the perpetrators of this fraud. His principled stand for probity and justice has made him an obvious target. As at the moment the MD has started sending texts and e-mails accusing him of collaborating with me to expose their criminal activities which he qualifies as acting against the interest of the company.
7.) Similarly my life and safety of my family has been under serious threat since the commencement of this latest confrontation with them. I have been illegally kept out of my office since the 15th of August 2008. My office has reportedly been vandalized, ransacked and the locks forced open and changed by Dr. Orere and his accomplices. As at this moment of writing, I am yet to determine the state of several documents and valuables that I kept in my office. Numerous threats have been sent to me to either desist from exposing this crime or face the consequence. Many of my subordinates in the office that are believed to be very close to me have been summoned by the M.D and threatened with sack if they do not reveal my hide-out. My accumulated salaries and other emoluments have been withheld by Dr. Orere for close to 70 days now. My two daughters in university have had to abandon their schooling because of unpaid fees.
8.) All efforts to resolve this matter through the disciplinary committee set up by the Board of Directors have been thwarted and sabotaged by the aforementioned individuals. MD, been sending texts insisting that the duly appointed chairman of the disciplinary committee must be excluded from the proceedings of the committee. This he ascribes to extraneous and far fetched reasons that have no material relevance to the matter whatsoever.
I appeal to your esteemed organization to come to our aid by intervening immediately in this matter. I enclose copies of all my correspondences to and from the dramatis personae. I am also available to assist in any way or manner the agency may wish.
Sir Chima can verify my submissions. The agency should contact him as soon as possible so as to verify many aspects and issues raised in this petition. I urge the agency to alert him and help him to organize his personal security because I am sure the culprits will stop at nothing to frustrate the law from taking its course.
In conclusion I wish to reiterate my unflinching support for the agency in its noble objective of uncovering crime in general and corporate crimes in particular. The magnitude of corporate crimes that go unpublished and unpunished is what makes our private sector largely comatose. Shareholders are being short-changed by a group of professional thieves who seek to gain hold of companies only to fatten their own pockets at the expense of the investing public. Our economy and children have no hope of recovery without a concerted effort by organizations like yours to bring about transparency, probity and justice not only in the public and political cycles but also in our corporate environment.
Chief (Mrs.) Oluwatoyin Olakunri in her determined effort to continue in money laundering through Kenya leather factory has abandoned the company’s investment in Nabegu leather industry in Kano. Our company that was the largest consumer of leather in Nigeria under BATA has now been turned into a shadow of its former self. This in turn has severely affected the leather industry in Kano and other states in the North whose reliance on the leather industry as an important source of income cannot be overemphasized. The entire leather industry can be restored from its current comatose position if only we are allowed to rehabilitate the largest consumer of leather in Nigeria.
I pray that the good Lord will continue to guide and protect you and all your operatives. I pray for wisdom, knowledge and understanding to defend the honor and reputation of our dear nation’s economy and to bring about permanent change for the better in the private sector as an important precondition for the take off of our Public/Private sector partnership.
Long live the economy of Nigeria!
Long live the EFCC!!
Long live the Federal Government of Nigeria!!!
Yours-in-service-to-the-fatherland,
YUSUF, M. A.
BUSINESS MANAGER/CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER
FAMARUBA LTD
FAMAD PLC
OJOTA, LAGOS.
POST-SC RIPT: Dear readers, the above reproduced cover letter was submitted at the 15A Awolowo Road Ikoyi office of the EFCC and was duly acknowledged by the receiving officer with an official stamp dated 31st October 2008 from the Head of Operations’ office.
I was subsequently invited to an interview with an investigation officer assigned to the case on the 27th of January 2009. I reviewed my submission and filed a handwritten statement adopting the case file for prosecution. Apart from a phone request by the investigation officer requesting me to provide the official and other addresses of the dramatis personae involved in the case, which I promptly supplied with their mobile phone numbers for ease of contact, I have not heard from the EFCC again till this moment.
I subsequently filed an official petition to the Securities and Exchange Commission (the official regulator of public quoted companies in Nigeria) and was duly acknowledged received by the Director General’s office Lagos on the 2nd of December 2008. That was the last I heard from them. The only response from the SEC was to de-list the company which was published in the ‘punch’ newspaper of May 13th 2009, ordering the shareholders that have been kept in the dark to take matters in to their hands and convene an EGM to determine the fate of their company!
A parody of an EGM was recently organized by Chief (Mrs.) Olakunri in far away Kano without following the stipulated due process. The claim that proxy forms were sent was false because all the shareholders that we compared notes with denied ever receiving any posted notice of EGM which the law required to be sent out within the stipulated period prior to the scheduled date.
Reports reaching us from the venue confirm that less than 60 shareholders attended the EGM out of a shareholders’ list of 15000 members as at 2001 when the last AGM of the company was held.
The few eyewitnesses who were at Kano also attest to the fact that Chief (Mrs.) Olakunri did not give any tangible reason why the company was de-listed which was the only item published as the Agenda of the EGM. Rather than that she was reported to have rented a crowd of purported shareholders to give her an illegitimate mandate to change the focus of the company from manufacture and distribution of footwear to other commercial activities. Needless to say this was in direct violation of the procedure for holding Extra-Ordinary General Meetings.
The bottom line is where do we go from here? What options are there for poor impoverished stakeholders who have only their labour to offer when the high and mighty has purposed to dispossess them of their livelihood?
Your guess is as good as mine as the hearing continues.
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