The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has said it has traced 17 accounts to former Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh (retd).
Badeh was in January arrested for the non-specification of procurement costs, absence of contract agreements, award of contracts beyond authorised thresholds, transfer of public funds for unidentified purposes and general non-adherence to provisions of the Public Procurement Act.
The source at the EFCC who revealed that 17 accounts had been traced to the former Air Chief added that the accounts had all been frozen.
While the immediate past Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Adesola Amosu (retd.), had been cooperating with the EFCC, Badeh has refused to return stolen funds, a detective at the EFCC has said.
“Amosu has been cooperating with us and has been returning funds. However, Badeh was very stubborn. Since he refused to return funds, we took him to court.
“Badeh’s case is in court so I cannot talk much about it. However, even after he was charged, we continued to investigate his case. We have frozen all of his accounts including the dollar accounts he opened here in Nigeria,” the detective added.
A former Director of Finance and Accounts at the NAF, Air Commodore Salisu Yushau (retd.), who is an EFCC witness, had revealed before a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja, that all past air chiefs diverted N558.2m monthly from funds meant for the payment of salaries of Nigerian Air Force officials.
The EFCC source told our correspondent that the commission had reason to believe that the diversion of funds at the NAF was still ongoing.
He said, “We were told that over N558.2m was diverted by the office of the Chief of Air Staff monthly and the money was converted to dollars. We were told that air force officers from the rank of air commodore and above all benefited from the money.
“We believe that even after Amosu had left, they still shared money. We were told that even in February, these illegal deductions were still made. In due course, our findings will be made public.”
