Report has emerged that alleged past impropriety of suspended Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Abdulrasheed Bawa, is partly responsible for his trial.

Bawa was suspended by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

Subsequently to his suspension, he has been in the custody of the Department of State Security Services.

His ordeal, Punchng citing an unnamed source, in a way, has to do with his time as zonal head of EFCC in Port Harcourt during which he allegedly sold 244 trucks seized by the agency from fraud suspect(s) to his proxies for giveaway prices.

The incident reportedly happened in 2019 led to Bawa’s arrest then, with report that he sold the trucks which market price range from N20m to N30m each for N100,000 per unit to his proxies, and consequently deprived the country of around N4.8bn in potential loot recovery.

“In 2019, Bawa was arrested and questioned over the sale of about 244 trucks that were seized by our Port Harcourt zonal office, where he worked then as zonal head. That case is one of the major reasons why he was suspended and is being investigated.

“He sold the trucks worth between N20m and N30m each to his proxies at N100,000 per unit, depriving the country of about N4.8bn in potential loot recovery.

“This prompted the former EFCC Secretary, Ola Olukoyede, to confront the EFCC boss in 2019, as he was said to have received complaints that Bawa was tampering with assets undergoing forfeiture proceedings.

“But when Bawa was queried about what happened to the trucks, he claimed that he was acting on the instructions of the former Chairman, Magu, but he never wrote that in his statement,” the publication quoted the unnamed source as saying.