A United States’ based lawyer, Emeka Ugwuonye is to be charged to court by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission(EFCC) for alleged illegal diversion of $1.5m belonging to his client.
According to a? statement signed by Head of Media and Publicity of the EFCC, Femi Babafemi, a petition forwarded to? the anti- graft agency sometime in 2007,revealed that Ugwuonye collected the sum of $94,948.00(Ninety Four thousand, Nine hundred and forty eight US dollars, on behalf of his client, Sola Adeeyo but failed to keep to terms on which the money was sent.
Rather than remit the funds to his client’s account as agreed , the lawyer was said to have converted the said amount to personal use. All efforts to retrieve the fund in naira or foreign denomination value failed, the commission stressed.
The embattled lawyer who is currently facing a two count criminal charge at a Federal High Court and an FCT High Court respectively, is to be arraigned again before a Lagos High Court today. The EFCC had earlier charged the accused to court over failure to declare his assets during investigations into the alleged diversion of $1.5m.