The Borno State High Court, Maiduguri, on Wednesday, March 7, 2024, convicted and jailed the Managing Director of Kyari and Sons Company Nigeria Limited, Alhaji Kyari Mohammed to one-year imprisonment on two charges bordering on conspiracy and criminal misappropriation to the tune of N99, 750,000.00.
While giving an option of N200,000, instead of the jail term, it further ordered the convict to pay the sum of N99, 750,000, to the petitioner or spend ten years in the Correctional Centre.
Justice Aisha Kumaliya’s judgment was a sequel to two-count amended charges bordering on conspiracy and criminal misappropriation pressed against the convict by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
Count one reads: ”That you Kyari Mohammed being a Managing Director of Kyari and Sons Company Nigeria Limited and alter ego of Kyari and Sons Company Nigeria Limited, a company registered in Nigeria, sometime March 2018 at Maiduguri, Borno State within the jurisdiction of this Honorable Court, did conspire among yourselves to obtain the gross sum of N99,750,000.00 (Ninety Nine Million, Seven Hundred and Fifty Thousand Naira) only, which you knew to be false and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 8(a) of the Advance Fee Fraud and other Fraud Related Offences and Punishable under the same Act.”
The defendant pleaded ‘not guilty’ to the charges preferred against him by EFCC.
Counsels for the prosecution, Mukhtar Ali Ahmed and S.O Saka, in the course of the trial, presented three witnesses and tendered documents as exhibits before the court.
Counsel for the defendant W.Y Maikyau, prayed the court to temper justice with mercy and sentence the defendant with an option of fine “as he is a first-time offender”.
The convict’s journey to the Correctional Centre began when a petitioner alleged that he fraudulently collected food items amounting to N99, 750,000.00 from him, under the guise of supplying the items to a Non- Governmental Organization, NGO, with a promise to pay for the items within forty-five days.
Mohammed neither paid for the food items nor returned them to the supplier.
