How Saraki’s London property came to be known – Wetkas

A prosecution witness, Michael Wetkas, on Wednesday gave details of how investigators discovered that Senate President, Bukola Saraki, has a property in London, which he bought with a N375 million loan from the Guarantee Trust Bank (GTB) Plc, but allegedly failed to declare it after his tenure as governor in 2011.

Wetkas, who spoke during cross-examination by Saraki’s lawyer, Paul Usoro (SAN), at the resumption of the false asset declaration trial at the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), said the London property was acquired in 2010.

He said the Senate president failed to declare the property in the asset declaration form he completed on completing his second term as Governor of Kwara State in 2011.

The witness, an operative of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), said Saraki obtained the N375m loan from GTB in 2010 with which he procured the London property through a mortgage redemption payment system.

He said there was debit entry of $1.2m on the Senate president’s dollar account in favour of the pounds sterling account on February 10, 2010 and $1m on February 15, 2010.

Reading from Saraki’s statement of account with GTB, the witness traced how the loan disbursed in his naira account was transferred to the dollar account and later into the pounds sterling account.

Wetkas said the EFCC foreign investigative partners “unofficially” disclosed the address of the property as No 8, Whittaker Street, London and that it had a title number NGN802235.

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