An appellate court in Abuja has struck out the appeal filed by the Federal Government seeking to reopen the criminal trial of Orji Kalu, former Abia State governor.
In the judgment delivered on Wednesday, a three-member panel of the court held that the record of appeal transmitted before the court was incompetent.
Justice Joseph Oyewole, who read the lead judgment, held that the federal government failed to properly transmit the record as prescribed by the rules of the court and that it was neither stamped nor properly signed.
Consequently, the two appeals marked: CA/ABJ/CV/797/2021 and CA/ABJ/CV/798/2021, filed against Kalu and his firm, were struck out.
Persecondnews recalls that Kalu, a former Abia governor and a serving senator in 2019, was sentenced to 12 years in prison by a Federal High Court sitting in Lagos in a fraud case of N7.5 billion filed against him by the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC).
The presiding judge, Justice Mohammed Idris, also ordered the former governor’s company, Slok Nigeria Limited, used in defrauding Abia, forfeited to the Federal Government of Nigeria.
Udeh Udeogu, who was the director of finance in the Government House, Abia State while Kalu served as governor, was also sentenced to 10 years behind bars by Idris, who described money laundering as a crime against humanity.
The judgment followed 12 years of protracted legal battles between Kalu and the EFCC. Kalu was tried alongside his company, Slok Nigeria Limited, and Udeogu.
In an amended 39-charge, they were accused by the EFCC of conspiring and diverting over N7 billion from the coffers of the state.
The EFCC, in one of the counts, alleged that Kalu “procured Slok Nigeria Limited, a company solely owned by you and members of your family, to retain in its account, domiciled with the then Inland Bank Plc, Apapa branch, Lagos, an aggregate sum of N7,197,871,208.7 on your behalf.”
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