The managing director of First City Monument Bank (FCMB), Adam Nuru, has said that the bank just discovered that N573 million was mistakenly transferred into the church account of Pastor Emmanuel Omale.

Nuru disclosed this while testifying on Thursday, before the committee currently investigating Magu for alleged mismanagement of recovered fund by the anti-graft agency.

This is coming weeks after the Presidential Committee on Audit of Recovered Assets (PCARA) accused the suspended EFCC acting chairman, Ibrahim Magu, of allegedly using Omale, founder of the Divine Hand of God Prophetic Ministry, to launder funds abroad.

Magu is currently being investigated by a panel headed by a former President of the appeal court, Ayo Salami, over allegations of corruption and insubordination levelled against him by the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami.

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Justice Ayo Salami said Magu purchased a property worth N573 million in Dubai using Omale’s name, which the pastor denied.

Omale said he indeed met Magu in Dubai earlier in the year but not for unlawful activity.

Omale said he only prayed with the suspended EFCC boss who had travelled to Dubai on medical grounds.

A letter signed by Omale’s lawyer read in part, “We, however, wish to make the following clarifications to put the public records straight: That our client is the General Overseer of an Inter-denominational/Multi-religious Prayer Ministry.

“That our client, only visited Mr. Ibrahim Magu in a hospital in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, sometime in March 2020.

“That our client never laundered any funds whatsoever for Mr. Ibrahim Magu or for anybody whatsoever. Our client does not own any foreign bank account anywhere in the world.

“That there are no funds whatsoever traceable from Mr. Ibrahim Magu to our client’s bank accounts whatsoever neither has our client received any funds whatsoever from Mr. Ibrahim Magu. Our client has never received any funds whatsoever from anybody on behalf of Mr. Ibrahim Magu.

“That our client does not own any property in Dubai. His name was never used to purchase any property whatsoever in Dubai, United Arab Emirates or anywhere else in any part of the world, neither has he purchased any property nor properties for Mr. Ibrahim Magu in any part of the world whatsoever.”

Recall, Magu had denied more corruption allegations levelled against him and also vowed to re­spond “point by point to all false allegations orchestrated against him.

Magu, who spoke through his lawyer, Wahab Shittu, via a statement, refuted reports of him misappropriating N329 billion recovered funds for the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, (NNPC) and another N3 billion recovered for the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Eons Intelligence reports.

Speaking on this, the FCMB MD said the mistake was discovered upon invitation by the probe committee four years after the money was posted.

“On January 16, 2016, we made a return to NFIU which indicated that there was a transaction of an inflow of well over N573million. (N573,228,40).

“This return was said to be in favour of Divine Hand of God Prophetic Ministries Account No 1486743019.

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“After that report, we conducted an investigation and discovered that the lodgement which we reported to NFIU was an error.

“The error was as a result of the fact that we were using a bank application called Pinnacle-7. However, we migrated from that application to a newer version called Pinnacle-10.

“Usually, when the bank intends to migrate from one application to another, we utilize weekends to carry out the exercise. The migration involves moving all the balances of customers from the previous application to the new application. The account of the Divine Hand Ministries was moved during that migration.

“It was that balance of N573million that was wrongly posted as an inflow into Divine Hand Ministries as reported to NFIU. This error was not peculiar to Divine Hand of God Prophetic Ministries alone but was also ascribed to 27 other accounts,” Nuru said.