Transparency Nigeria Group has urged the Central Bank of Nigeria to immediately dismiss Ademola Ademise, the Chief Executive Officer of WEMA Bank, for alleged fraud.
In a statement issued by Dahiru Mohammed, the group’s Communications Director, Ademise was accused of grossly abusing his position as CEO of Wema Bank and violating several CBN regulations.
According to the group, under Ademise’s supervision, Wema Bank covered up a massive fraudulent scheme perpetrated by companies and proxies of All Progressives Congress National Leader Bola Tinubu.
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TNG demanded his immediate removal, saying, “By doing so, Mr Ademise failed in his fiduciary duties and allowed a powerful politician to profit.”
The group cited a Peoples Gazette story from November 23, 2020, in which bank records revealed that Ocean Trust Limited, a company linked to Tinubu, shuffled billions of naira between its accounts with Wema Bank.
The newspaper detailed the transaction between January and June 2019 in which Ocean Trust transferred N16.4 billion from its operations accounts to a fixed deposit account all of which were held by Wema Bank.
This occurred following the court case involving Dayo Apara, a former Managing Director of Alpha Beta, a company owned in part by Tinubu.
Ocean Trust was specifically mentioned in Apara’s court documents as one of the companies allegedly used to siphon funds from Alpha-Beta, the contentious Lagos tax contractor.
The report claims that Alpha Beta received billions of dollars from Lagos Treasury since Tinubu was Governor of Lagos State.
Apara claimed that the firm received N150 billion from Lagos over the last 15 years.
On January 2, 2019, Ocean Trust transferred N1.5 billion from its 0702892574 Wema Bank account to another Wema Bank account, 0122613238.
The transaction’s description was labeled “Closure proceeds.”
On January 9, N800 million was transferred to the same bank account a week later.
N500 million was also transferred to the same account on January 16, 2019. On February 1, February 8, and February 15, 2019, N1.5 billion, N800 million, and N500 million were transferred to the 0122613238 Ocean Trust account, respectively.
On March 4, 2019, N1.5 billion was transferred to the same account, while N800 million and N500 million were transferred on March 11 and 18, 2019.
On April 3, another N1.5 billion was credited to the account, followed by N800 million on April 10 and another N500 million on April 17.
On May 3, N1.5 billion was transferred to the account, while N600 million and N500 million were credited on May 10 and May 17, respectively.
N1.5 billion was transferred to the Ocean Trust account on June 3, with another N600 million transferred on June 10 and another N500 million transferred on June 17.
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