The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) said it is probing the alleged fraud and illegal forex transactions worth millions of dollars, tax evasion and money laundering by the Founder, Xejet Airline, Emmanuel Iza and his British business partner, Ashay Mervyn.

The ongoing investigation followed a petition by a law firm – Gray Law Practice, on behalf of an anti-corruption group – the Anti-Corruption and Integrity Forum.

The group in a letter dated July 25, 2023, asked the EFCC to investigate Iza for allegedly laundering money for politicians through his company, Xejet Limited Access Bank dollar account through some Bureau de Change operators, who allegedly served as middlemen.

The petition read: “It is our brief that Emmanuel Iza, simply called “the suspect” in some parts of this petition is the Founder/Chief Executive Officer of Xejet Limited, a commercial airline company recently registered in Nigeria. Available documents revealed that Mr lza allegedly conspired with other persons and companies, some of which are based in the United Kingdom, to carry out fraud, illegal forex transactions running into millions of dollars, tax evasion, money laundering and terrorism financing against the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

“From the records, the originator of all transactions and architect of the entire fraudulent scheme was allegedly Emmanuel Iza.

“He was accused of using proxies who were mostly Bureau De Change operators to clean very huge sums of money for top government functionaries, personalities and dignitaries.

Usually, usually, the suspect mopup stolen funds, sends them abroad and simply wait to receive bogus credit alerts from foreign countries, especially United Kingdom.

“Tracking of financial exhibits revealed that various utilized Bureau De Change operators were paid forex in cash by Mr Emmanuel Iza. The operators in turn pay to a middleman (VALWORLD PIERRE GLOBAL SERVICES/Okoye Valentine Chukwuemeka, a suspected internet fraudster also popularly referred to as “yahoo boy” in Naira, who holds down the cash for the foreign counterparts," it added.

The petitioner held that the essence of routing the forex through different channels is to prevent the anti-graft agencies from tracing the transactions to him.

“When contacted, the spokesperson for the EFCC, Wilson Uwujaren, noted that his office was yet to be notified of the development, adding that the commission received hundreds of petitions from time to time.

“I am not aware of this particular petition as nothing of such has been sent to my office. The commission receives hundreds of petitions from time to time, and it’s not being handled by my office,” Uwujaren said.

However, affirming the petition was an official letter dated Thursday, July 27, whereby EFCC confirmed receipt of the petition last Thursday.

The Petition titled, “Petition against Mr Emmanuel Iza. Submitted by Graylaw Practice was marked, EFCC/PET/HQR/4820/2023.

(Courtesy, excluding headline, The Guardian)

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