The Upper Area Court sitting in Ilorin granted N1 million bail to two Kwara State civil servants, Adeyemo Olarewaju and Tajudeen Alao after they were arraigned for alleged N14.609 million fraud.
The duo, who work at the Kwara State Printing and Publishing Corporation, publishers of The Herald titles, appeared before Mr. Sunday Adeniyi.
They were accused of fraudulent activities within the cooperative society of the media organization.
According to a complaint from the corporation’s New Hope Multipurpose Cooperative Society Limited, Olarewaju and Alao served as the immediate past Chairman and Secretary of the cooperative society, respectively.
The criminal summons presented to the court revealed that the two officials were unable to explain the whereabouts of N14,609,100 during their tenure from 2012 to 2022.
The criminal summons further revealed that “However, after the tenure of the duo, the Ministry of Commerce and Cooperative officials audited the account of the cooperative and imposed N1m penalty on the defendants for their poor management of the account of the cooperative society but the defendants failed to pay the penalty until date.
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“The defendants also failed to refund the sum of N14,609,100 misappropriated despite repeated demands, hence this application.”
In his bail application, counsel for the defendants, Mr Bisi Adedayo of Onaolapo Chambers, prayed the court to grant his clients bail in liberal terms assuring the court that they would provide reliable sureties that would stand for them and that they would not jump bail.
The complainant’s counsel, Hawawu Nana Abubakar from Manzuma Issa & Co., did not object to the bail request.
The defendants, who pleaded not guilty, were each granted bail in the amount of N1 million with two sureties who must be civil servants on Grade Level 12 and above.
Additionally, the court instructed each defendant to deposit N3 million into the court’s treasury.
The case has been adjourned until October 21, 2024, for further proceedings.
