Firm Drags Portuguese’ MD, Others Before EFCC Over Alleged N80m Fraud
A Nigerian firm, Nigerian Ropes Plc, has petitioned the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) over multimillion naira fraud, allegedly perpetrated by its former Managing Director, Mr. Joao Mario Carradinha, a Portuguese, and it’s three former officials.
The three officials as listed in the petition dated October 22, 2019, and received by the anti-graft agency on October 23, 2019, are: Ayodeji Balogun, Chimaroke Aloa and Mobolaji Olawoye.
Nigerian Ropes Plc in the petition captioned: “petition against those listed above for acts of money laundering, criminal breach of trust and embezzlement of company funds e.t.c.”, to the EFCC signed by its solicitor, Adewale Fadipe, alleged that Mr. Joao Mario Carradinha Costa Pereira, while employed as its Managing Director, fictitiously and fraudulently appointed his wife, and made fraudulent payments in foreign currency of United State dollars to the said wife, who was not resident in Nigeria nor offered any services to the company.
The company’s solicitor, Fadipe, also alleged that Mr. Joan Pereira, made several withdrawals from the company’s account in local currency and converted same to hard currency for personal use.
The said embezzlement according to the company’s solicitor runs to several hundred of million Naira. Adding that attempt was made to retrieve the money from the Portuguese but such effort was unsuccessful as he suspected to have absconded from Nigeria and is thought to make ingress into and egress out of Nigeria steadily.
The company’s solicitor further alleged that Mr. Pereira, rather than refunding the said money to the company, took flight and is reasonable suspected to be resident in either England or Portugal.
In the annexure attached with the petition tagged ‘fraud investigation report summary’, signed by the company’s Internal Auditor, Fuhad Smith, stated that
On July 16, 2019, the Board Chairman Kola Karim forwarded mail he received from Marcus Curry Managing Director of George Taylor Lifting Gear Ltd a key Supplier of Nigerian Ropes Plc, wherein Marcus Curry informed that Joao Pereira and Ayodeji Babatunde incorporated a company named ‘OLS Hoist Service Nig. Limited to act as a parallel company to Nigerian Ropes Plc but since the incorporation of the company, he has not been able to reach either Joao Pereira nor Ayodeji Babatunde and he alleged they are exploiting Nigerian Ropes pic with OLS. All these was done without the Board of Nigerian Ropes approval.
The audit report stated that based on this initial predication above, a fraud examination was conducted, which included review of relevant records and interviews of appropriate personnel.
The Audit reports also stated that upon confirmation of OLS has a supplier to Nigerian Ropes Plc, Joao Pereira and Ayodeji Babatunde were picked up by the Police officers at Zone 2 Police Station Onikan for questioning on the allegations. While they were being questioned examination of the fraud commenced.
Joao Pereira, according to the report. was appointed as the Managing Director of Nigerian Ropes Plc on 16th April 2013. Ayodeji was employed in the Account & Finance department as Senior Accountant on 2nd January 2014 and he was promoted to Finance Manager effective 12th January 2016.
The report stated further that the Fraud Examination Team reviewed Purchase Orders to OLS from 2017 up to July 2019, conducted interviews of key employees who we believed may have information regarding the allegations, and also searched the office of both accused of any corroborative evidence; during the search, it was found Ayodeji Babatunde & Joao Pereira were maintaining box files of source documents for transaction of OLS within Nigerian Ropes P|c. Within these box files of OLS, we found OLS Purchase Orders to third parties for items invoiced to Nigerian Ropes. These third parties are initially suppliers of Nigerian Ropes, hence Joao & Ayodeji used OLS to procure items for the company and then sold the same items to the company at an inflated price.
The Audit report also stated that during the fraud examination, it was found Joao Pereira allegedly falsified an employment contract for his wife Eugenia Ines Brites de Sa Alves. And that the fake employment contract was signed by him and dated 28th April, 2013, the Human Resource Department cannot verify the authenticity of this contract. However, his wife earned USD $1,500 monthly remuneration to her bank account for 10 months from September 2018 to June 2019.
