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 convicted Filipinos at the Federal High Court,Benin on Friday. 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 them include conspiracy 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 Peniano 34yrs, 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.
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 next Tuesday.
thats news from EFCC,
so my concern is we now have thieves from Abroad who steal for us?
i thought we had enough of our own problems.
NGEX welcomes and encourages reader comments. Permission to post reader comments is assumed, and we reserve the right to excerpt or edit for clarity any comments that are posted. We won't be able to publish all comments. And we can't vouch for the accuracy of posts from readers. Nickname or Name will be used to identify your post.
"The views and opinions expressed in these comment(s) or article(s) do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of NGEX, its partners or its affiliates."
