I was Never Involved, Jailed For Fraud, Pretty Lagos Lawyer Laments

Sunday Okobi and Ugo Aliogo

A Lagos-based lawyer, Mrs. Ifeyinwa Morah, has refuted all allegations of fraud and jail term sentence leveled against her on many blogs and other social media platforms, saying the allegations were not only injurious to her person but to her profession, family and business relations.

Morah, who is also a  businesswoman of repute, narrated to Yellowstone Media/THISDAY recently that her business partners in New York, United States of America, called her attention to some publications online, which she described as unreliable uncorroborated unprofessional junk publication) where it was stated that she was jailed for defrauding her employers in Nigeria, and a disclaimer put out in her name!

The barrister, who lamented on the injurious impression such wicked allegations have left on her personality, told THISDAY in an interview recently that although the matter had been settled out of court by a highly respected cleric, Pastor Ituah Ighodalo, it was necessary for her to also clear her name and put the records straight.

While narrating her own side of the saga, the oil and gas magnet explained: “We owned a licenced company called IT Bureau De Change INT'L as directors, and we were trading on Forex. As the Executive director who was running the daily day to day transactions of the company, after a period of eight months of reviving the hitherto moribund license from the ashes, I asked for the account department to compute the account state of the company, but it was obvious that other directors were reluctant or negligent in trying to call up for the Annual General Meetings (AGM) which we were yet to have, so I asked the account department to compute what was my commission, not “salary because I was not paid salary,” and that was how N50 million from our profit was transferred to an Escrow name. The moribund company was revived by me with a working capital of $50,000 of which I assiduously grew to a positive excess of N280million. 

 

“It was transferred in escrow to Alhaji Francis Ogboro, and it was supposed to be for him to hold it in escrow pending when the final determination of the accounting system was done. But the other boardroom members who were, unfortunately, a couple ganged up against me and said I stole the money from the company.”

Morah, who contested for the Federal House of Representatives recently in her constituency in Anambra State, added that “my Co directors/partners began the use of negative publications against me. But then when I saw the publication and the so-called disclaimers in some junk magazines and prominent newspapers back then in 2015, I decided to put in a rejoinder in a reputable newspaper that I was sure they would conduct due diligence and proper investigative journalism before heading to print media, THISDAY September 22, 2015, and  DAILY TIMES on September 28 & 29, 2015, over the matter, and when there was no response from the fellow directors, I headed to court, even though the matter was later settled out of court in my favour and we arrived at a consent judgment. I didn’t defraud my company, and I was never jailed by any court.”

She condemned strongly the injury the fraud allegations caused to her person and business, adding that “being a legal practitioner, you know that credibility is everything in my profession. If I was such a fraudulent person as they captioned in most of the junk publications, I would have been summoned before the disciplinary committee of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA).

“A lot of very senior advocates of the prestigious inner Bar have been summoned before the NBA's disciplinary action committee and they have been disbarred and their names have been removed from the roll call of legal practitioners. So I don’t see how a junior member of the outer bar can go around with fraud allegations hanging all over her, and petition was sent to the NBA-without being investigated. So it is evident that it was junk publicity, targeted at maiming my personality and hard earned businesses.

"It was purely malicious prosecution at its worst description which was instituted against me but in the end, the same prosecution moved for the removal/withdrawal of the matter they originally instituted from the Magistrate court that was handling the matter. This they did *Suo Moto* and eventually, they conceded to a consent judgment based on the law suit and series of documentary facts I evidently had instituted at the Federal High Court in Ikoyi on a different civil suit for defamation and character assasination, which still ended in my favour.

“I am using this opportunity and medium to tell the world that I have never been involved in any fraudulent acts neither will I be in the future nor was I jailed for any unlawful act. I want the world to know the true state of what happened in 2015 which has ingloriously dented my hard-earned personality and business relations.”