Justice Mohammed Liman of the Federal High Court, Lagos, has threatened to issue a bench warrant for the arrest of a Lagos-based businessman, Kenneth Ndubuisi Amadi, after the businessman failed to appear before the court yesterday for arraignment over a fraud case against him.
When the matter came up, a prosecutor from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecution, Federal Ministry of Justice, Abuja, Mrs Imama, informed the court that prosecutors had travelled to Lagos from Abuja on four occasions for the arraignment of the defendant but to no avail.
Imama requested for reimbursement of N150,000, representing the cost of her transportation and accommodation for the failed arraignment yesterday.
The court ordered a payment of N50,000 in favour of the prosecution and threatened to issue a bench warrant for the arrest of the defendant if he was not in court for his arraignment on the next adjourned date.
Amadi, while employed by Eunisell as the Chief Executive Officer, allegedly used his relationship with two customers of the company and diverted payments meant for Eunisell into his personal account, IDID Nigeria Limited’s account and other company accounts owned by him.
The prosecution alleged that Amadi deprived the company of its funds as and when due as he controlled Eunisell’s payments and only remitted when the company felt the receivables from those companies were taking longer than usual.
The prosecutor also alleged that the defendant, “whom Eunisell had regarded as a trusted staff at all material times”, ensured that Eunisell’s bank statement did not show the name of his own companies so that Eunisell would not know what was going on.
The court had on November 28, 2019 fixed the arraignment of Amadi for Wednesday January 8, 2020 but further adjourned it till January 20, 2020.
