Two former staff of First City Monument Bank (FCMB), Jude Ameh and Ademola Aderibigbe have been convicted by Justice Farouq Lawan of the Kano State High Court for stealing the sum of N11, 360,000 belonging to the bank.
The duo were said to have connived and fraudulently stolen the said sum of N11, 360,000 for their personal use. They were convicted on a one-count amended charge of theft.
They both had pleaded ‘not guilty’ to the 17-count charge brought against them by the Kano Zonal Office of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on October 31, 2019.
The prosecution counsel Salihu Sani had requested a date to proceed to trial when the accused approached the Commission with a plea bargain proposal which was accepted by the parties.
At the resumed hearing on Thursday, the accused had changed their plea from ‘not guilty’ to ‘guilty’ to an amended one-count charge of theft.
The charge read: ”That you Jude Ameh and Ademola Aderibigbe sometime in 2017 at Kano within the Jurisdiction of the High Court of Kano State did conspire between yourselves to commit an illegal act to wit: theft and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 96 of the Penal Code Law and Punishable under Section 97 of the same Law”.
Consequently, counsel for the prosecution, Sani urged the court to convict them accordingly.
They were subsequently convicted and sentenced to two years imprisonment with an option of N100, 000 (One Hundred Thousand Naira) fine.