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Thirteen Filipinos who were
arrested on 14th November, 2008, and
charged to court on 17th December, 2008,
were Friday 20th February, 2009,
convicted by Justice Chukwura Nnamani, at the
Federal High Court 1, Benin City.
The accused persons who initially
pleaded not guilty on arraignment, later changed
their plea and they were found guilty based on their
plea.
The charges against include
Conspiracy among themselves to commit felony; to
deal in petroleum products without authorization,
dealing in 12,000 metric tones of petroleum
products, suspected to be crude oil and bunkered in
a vessel marked MT-AKUADA.
Justice Nnamani in his judgement,
sentenced the 13 accused persons to five years
imprisonment, or a fine of one million naira
(N1,000,000.00 ) each. The names of the accused
persons (all-male) are: Erwin Anas 47yrs, Celso T.
Bael 40yrs, Pedro Gementiza 46yrs, Reagan Colorge
24yrs, Ronnie Fabricante 52yrs, Sebastian G.
Tedoosio 37yrs, George N. Balore 50yrs, Roland D.
Caro 25yrs, Marcelo Galola 34yrs, Revel A. Dos Dosir
Jnr. 24yrs, Richard Peniano34yrs, Arjay Alvarez
21yrs and Celso V. Zapauta 47yrs.
A team of Naval personnel from
Forward Operation Base (FOB) had on 14th
November, 2008, arrested the Filipinos on board a
vessel named MT.AKUADA, loaded with 12,000 metric
tons of petroleum product which was already on
outbound transit around Escravos Breakwater and were
subsequently handed over to the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission, Port Harcourt through
the Joint Task Force (Operation Restore Hope), Warri.
A
statement by Femi Babafemi, head, media and
publicity of Nigeria`s Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission ,EFCC said the case
was adjourned to 12th March, 2009, for a
locus inquo to decide the consequential order of
either a forfeiture or other wise.
Barely three weeks ago, seven
Ghanaians and a Nigerian were also arrested in Delta
with stolen petroleum product worth over
N300million. The eight of them are due to be
arraigned in a Benin federal high court nex Tuesday. |
