The Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice Lateef Fagbemi (SAN) have attempted to end a high-profile oil theft trial involving multinational oil trading giant Trafigura Beheer BV and Trafigura PTE Limited. Former Nigerian Bar Association President Joseph Daudu (SAN) has asked the Lagos State High Court in Ikeja to reject this attempt.
Daudu, who is defending the nominal complainant, Nadabo Energy Limited, appeared before Justice Mojisola Dada on Thursday and said that the case was brought under Lagos State’s Criminal Code Law (Cap. C17, 2003) rather than the federal penal system.
“The AGF’s office’s notice of discontinuance is unconstitutional,” Daudu declared, citing a violation of Section 211(1) of the 1999 Constitution.
He asserts that the Attorney General of Lagos State, not the Federal Government, has sole jurisdiction over the case because it started in Lagos State.
According to reports, Trafigura’s attorney petitioned the Federal Government to take up the case, and the AGF, working through the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), filed a notice of discontinuance.
The action was “ultra vires, null, void, and constitutionally defective,” according to Daudu.
“This notice should be set aside because it is fundamentally flawed and cloaked in incompetence,” he argued.
The Special Fraud Unit (SFU) claims that Trafigura and five other individuals stole Automotive Gas Oil (AGO) from Nadabo Energy for about $8,442,806.09, which is the main focus of the case (ID/7980c/2018).
Yusuf Kwande, Mettle Energy and Gas, Rembrandt Ltd, Osahon Asemota, and Jil Engineering and Oil Services Ltd are among the other defendants.
Earlier, each defendant entered a not guilty plea.
With 17 witnesses called by the prosecution, the trial had made great progress. Justice Dada ordered the accused to launch their defense after dismissing the defense’s no-case submission.
The contentious notice of discontinuance resulted from Trafigura’s legal team’s decision to ask the AGF to end the case rather than continue with its defense.
Following the prosecution’s motion to move the notice, the judge later released the defendants.
Trafigura’s lead attorney, Bode Olanipekun (SAN), had claimed that the defendants had already been charged with similar crimes before Justice Sedotan Ogunsanya in a previous case and had requested that the new case be dismissed for double jeopardy.
However, Justice Dada dismissed the application as without merit, ruling that there was no relationship between the two cases.
Trafigura’s lawyer started defense proceedings after multiple court decisions ordered the trial to begin, named three witnesses, and then asked the AGF to take over the case, a move that Daudu vehemently resisted.
