A former Petroleum Resources Minister Diezani Allison-Madueke has sued the Attorney General of the Federation and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) over what she termed a false and malicious attempt to “paint her as a common criminal”.
She is demanding N100bn to be paid to her in damages, according to a writ of summons filed on her behalf at the Federal High Court, Abuja, by her team of lawyers led by Mike Ozekhome (SAN).
Allison according to the suit directed “Defendants jointly and severally to pay to the Claimant the sum of N100,000,000,000.00 (100 billion naira) only as damages for the false, injurious, malicious and libelous publications against the Claimant in the 1st Defendant’s publishing platform, and at the instance of both the 1st and the 2nd Defendants”.
In the writ of summons dated May 26, 2023, the former minister is also demanding that the EFCC and AGF apologise to her in three national dailies over what she described as “the false, injurious, malicious and libelous publications” against her since she left Nigeria in 2015.
Alison-Madueke left the country shortly after leaving office in 2015.
The anti-graft agency, had on August 8, 2017, released an expose titled, ‘EFCC traces N47.2bn, $487.5m to ex-Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke’, accusing the former minister of fraud and money laundering.
Shortly after the EFCC publication, several other sums of money and other assets, including jewellery and houses, linked to her had been seized and forfeited to the Federal Government.
Alison-Madueke, in her suit against the EFCC and AGF, denied the allegations, adding that the publication by the anti-graft agency was ‘maliciously written and authored and/or caused to be written, authored or published to the whole world at large’.
In the statement of claim, Alison-Madueke, through her lawyer, Ozekhome, said the reason she left the country on May 22, 2015, was because she was diagnosed with ‘the most aggressive form of breast cancer ;Triple Negative Cancer and was hurriedly flown to England in order to undertake a critical course of treatment’.
According to her, ‘no money whatsoever to the tune of $72.8 million associated to her was discovered in Fidelity Bank.
“The claimant (Alison-Madueke) states that contrary to the ridiculous allegation made by the 1st defendant that the sum of N47.2 bn, $487.5 m, $2.5 bn, $72.8 m, etc, were traced to the claimant’s home and bank accounts are laughable as no home can house such an amount of cash except for the Central Bank of Nigeria; nor banks keep custody of such sums without alerting appropriate authorities.”
Both EFCC and the AGF were given 14 days from the service of the summons to enter their defence.