?The Police Serious Fraud Unit (SFU) yesterday commenced the interrogation of some arrested oil marketers, but feelers from the Force headquarters showed that the suspects were unable to defend specific allegations leveled against them in the documents available to the Police authorities.
Sources at the Police Serious Fraud Unit revealed that the arrested marketers were unable to defend allegations bordering on manipulations of shipment records through which the nation was ripped off billions of Naira.
It was learnt yesterday that the marketers were dumbfounded when they were confronted with the evidence against them.
The sources provided the example of a popular oil baron who was recently granted bail after several days in detention. According to the highly placed source, when the interrogators confronted him with overwhelming evidence of fraud committed by his companies totaling over N10 billion in false claims, he did not provide any evidence to back up his alleged innocence.
The evidence against him includes collecting subsidy payments without proof of existence of the mother vessel bill of lading and payments for which mother vessels were not found in locations claimed at the time of transshipment totaling over ten billion naira.
Feelers from the interrogation group showed that the said marketer was dumb founded when shown details of the indictment which are said to be specific and concrete, leading investigators to confirm a water tight case against the high profile marketer.
“When it became clear that the evidence was too much, the man just kept quiet”, said the source.
