By Baron Ike
The last may not have been heard about hos the Governor of Imo State, Rochas Okorocha is fleecing the state of its scarce resources in his bid to retain political power by proxy.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has arrested Okorocha’s Accountant-General, Uzoho Casmir, accusing him of the Governor to launder N1.05 billion for the governorship and assembly elections on Saturday.
The allegations were contained in an EFCC situation report obtained on Friday by Armadanews.com.
Okorocha, a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was recently suspended for anti-party activities and for supporting his son-in-law, Uche Nwosu of the Action Alliance (AA) against the governorship candidate of the APC, Hope Uzodinma.
Okorocha has remained unrepentant in his fight with the leadership of the APC over the choice of Uzodinma instead of his son in-law.
According to the EFCC report, “The, EFCC, Enugu Zonal Office, Thursday, March 8, 2019 arrested the Acting Accountant General of Imo State, Mr. Uzoho Casmir, on suspicion of laundering the sum of N1.050bn through a new generation bank for the governor of the state, Rochas Okorocha.”
The report continued: “Uzoho’s arrest followed intelligence report that the governor intended to use the money for vote buying in favour of a particular candidate in tomorrow’s gubernatorial election. Intelligence further revealed that Mr Casmir withdrew the amount in three tranches between Tuesday and Thursday this week in the following order; N200m on Tuesday, N500m on Wednesday and N350m on Thursday.
“Meanwhile, the EFCC has blocked the traced accounts, while the arrested Accountant General has been providing useful information to the commission. Mr Casmir was before his appointment, a Director of Finance in Okorocha’s government and was in 2016 fingered in N2bn bailout fund scam, which was then given to the state by the Federal Government for the payment of salary arrears of civil servants.”