#DasukiGate: EFCC Grills Ex-CDS, Badeh For Over Nine Hours

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Former chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshall Alex Badeh was on Monday interrogated by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for over nine hours for his involvement in the alleged $2.1bn arms deal.

According to reports, Badeh, arrived at the EFCC headquarters in Abuja at about 10 am.

It would be recalled that Badeh honoured the invitation extended to him by the commission, over his involvement in the alleged $2.1bn arms deal on Wednesday last week and was asked to report to the headquarters of the anti-graft agency.

It was gathered that the former CDS was been interrogated over his involvement in the purchase of 10 NAF contracts totalling 930,500,690 awarded to Societe D’ Equipments Internationaux (SEI) Nig Ltd. on his watch between January 2014 and February 2015.

The award letters, according to the arms probe panel, contained misleading delivery dates, suggesting fraudulent intent in the award process.

Also, EFCC is investigating the procurement of 36D6 Low Level Air Defence Radar for NAF which was awarded to GAT Techno Dynamics Ltd in April 2014 at the cost of $33 million on his watch.

The arms panel discovered that the radars were excessively overpriced as a complete set of such radars goes for $6 million.

Part of the EFCC questions for Badeh would be to shed light on the $3.3 million fraudulently included in the contract agreement as VAT and Withholding Tax and subsequently paid into the bank accounts of Spacewebs Interservices Ltd and Delfina Oil and Gas Ltd.

It was established that $2 million from the proceeds was transferred to Mono Marine Corporation Nig Ltd, which is jointly owned by some principal characters in the deals.

Operatives may also grill him over the procurement of two used Mi- 24V Helicopters instead of the recommended Mi- 35M series at the cost of $136,944,000. The helicopters were discovered to be excessively overpriced and not operationally airworthy at the time of delivery.

The arms probe panel established that a brand new unit of Mi-24V helicopter goes for about $30 million.

More worrisome is the discovery that the helicopters were delivered without rotor blades and upgrade accessories.

This is contrary to the written assertion of Amosu to the former National Security Adviser (NSA), Col. Sambo Dasuki, that all the four procured Alpha-Jets aircraft were delivered to NAF.

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