Magu probe: We wrongly reported that N573m was transferred to Prophet Omale- FCMB

By our reporter| The managing director of First City Monument Bank (FCMB), Adamu Nuru has told the Justice Ayo Salami panel that the bank made an error of posting N573 million into the church account of Emmanuel Omale.

The AGF and the Presidential Committee on Audit of Recovered Assets (PCARA) has cited the lodgement as evidence that Ibrahim Magu, suspended acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) was using Omale, founder of the Divine Hand of God Prophetic Ministry, to launder funds abroad.

The committee said the former acting chairman purchased a property in Dubai using Omale’s name.

The pastor has since denied the allegation.

But on Thursday while appearing before the committee, FCMB managing director told the panel the bank noticed the mistake following the invitation of the committee.

He said, “On January 16, 2016, we made a return to NFIU which indicated that there was a transaction of an inflow of well over N573million. (N573,228,40).”

“This return was said to be in favour of Divine Hand of God Prophetic Ministries Account No 1486743019.

“After that report, we conducted an investigation and discovered that the lodgement which we reported to NFIU was an error.

“The error was as a result of the fact that we were using a bank application called Pinnacle-7. However, we migrated from that application to a newer version called Pinnacle-10.

“Usually, when the bank intends to migrate from one application to another, we utilize weekends to carry out the exercise. The migration involves moving all the balances of customers from the previous application to the new application. The account of the Divine Hand Ministries was moved during that migration.

“It was that balance of N573million that was wrongly posted as an inflow into Divine Hand Ministries as reported to NFIU. This error was not peculiar to Divine Hand of God Prophetic Ministries alone but was also ascribed to 27 other accounts.”

Magu is being investigated by the Justice Salami presidential panel over allegation of mismanagement of recovered funds and insubordination levelled against him by Abubakar Malami, the attorney general of the federation and minister of justice.