Human rights lawyer, Femi Falana (SAN), has denied ever meeting the wanted former chairman of the Pension Reform Task Team (PRTT), Abdulrasheed Maina, let alone buying any house from him.
Falana said on Tuesday in Lagos, that there was no truth in the claims.
The senior lawyer who has at different times called for the arrest and prosecution of Maina for alleged acts of corruption while reacting to a statement credited to Maina’s lawyer, Sani Katu, said there was no iota of truth in Maina’s claims and challenged
Maina’s lawyer to produce details of the house he supposedly purchased.
“Which house? Where is it located? Is it in Lagos or Abuja,” Falana asked.
Katu, had in a statement issued in Kaduna on Monday accused Falana of attacking Maina as a pre-emptive measure to dissuade Maina from exposing the human rights activist as a beneficiary of the sale of the recovered assets.
Maina’s lawyer who claimed that the Maina Led Pension Reform Task Force Team recovered assets and funds worth N1.6trillion, said one of the assets recovered was a Maitama mansion worth N1billion situated at No 42 Gana Street, Maitama Abuja wh
Falana allegedly purchased.
Katu added that when eyebrows were raised on the transaction, the former chairman the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), then “arranged a fake scenario that one Alhaji Aliyu Abubakar, owner of AA Oil, was said to have sold the mansion to Falana at N1billion.”
In his reaction on Tuesday however, Falana maintained that he had never met Maina “Let him give details of the house. I have never met him or had any dealings with him before. He is engaging in the reckless blackmail because I criticized the careless handling of his matter by the federal government,” he said.
Falana stressed that he had only advised the government to act swiftly in prosecuting Maina in order to save the Buhari administration’s anti-corruption policy, whose credibility he alleged had been eroded by the government’s handling of the Maina
scandal.
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