Ismaila Mustapha, better known by his Instagram handle Mompha, responded on his page after the Lagos Special Offences Court, sitting in Ikeja, admitted as evidence a Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) report on him and his iPhone being used for fraudulent practices on Monday, September 18.
In Mompha’s trial in absentia for alleged money laundering brought by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the trial judge, Mojisola Dada, reportedly admitted the report.
Recall that the EFCC had charged Mompha and his company, Ismalob Global Investment, with eight counts of laundering N6 billion on January 22,2022.
Mompha pleaded not guilty to all of the counts when the charges were read to him at that time, and the court granted him bail.
However, the bail was later revoked by the court because Mompha failed to appear at the trial.
Sulaiman Suleiman, the attorney for the EFCC, who led FBI agent Ayorinde Solademi in testimony at the resumed trial, presented documents that included a letter from the EFCC to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States of America and a report from the Bureau.
Kolawole Salami, the defendant’s attorney, raised a challenge to the documents from the US Consulate’s admissibility because they lacked certification.
Salami argued that because the documents are not certified true copies, they should not be admitted.
Salami was overruled by the trial judge, who supported the prosecution’s stance that the documents were authentic and didn’t need to be certified. Solademi, who works at the FBI’s Nigerian Legal Attaché Office, admitted to the court during cross-examination by the defense attorney that he retrieved Mompha’s iPhone using a Faraday bag.
He claimed that the FBI’s forensic investigations showed Mompha’s iPhone had a compromised Microsoft 365 account and had been used to send account information to a United Arab Emirates (UAE) phone number and search for bank Swift Codes.
