In a confessional statement, Alhaji Muhammad Bashir Sa’idu, Malam Nasir El-Rufai’s former chief of staff, implicated his former principal in a money laundering case that is still pending against him.
Recall that after Sa’idu was arrested and arraigned by security forces on December 31, 2024, the Chief Magistrate Court in Rigasa placed him under remand at the Kaduna Correctional Center.
The former Chief of Staff is accused of selling $45 million in hard currency that belonged to the Kaduna State Government, which is equal to ₦18,450,000,000, at the incredibly low rate of ₦410 per dollar.
With criminal intent, this was done in lieu of the ₦498 per dollar parallel market rate, costing the government ₦3,960,000,000.
The prosecution claims that the offense occurred in 2022, during Sa’idu’s tenure as the El-Rufai administration’s Commissioner of Finance.
The prosecution also claimed that Sa’idu violated Section 18 of the Money Laundering (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, 2022, by laundering the ₦3,960,000,000 disparity.
Speaking anonymously to a few journalists in Kaduna, a security source revealed that Sa’idu had implicated El-Rufai in his police confession.
According to reports, the accused said, “His Excellency, the then-Governor of Kaduna State, Malam Nasir El-Rufai, made the decision regarding the currency conversion process, not the Commissioner of Finance. The governor would decide how much money should be converted to naira whenever the need arose. I received bids from a number of buyers, and the majority of the time, the offers I sent to His Excellency for approval were more than those found on the black market.
According to Section 18(3) of the Money Laundering (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, 2022, a person found guilty of violating subsection (2) faces a minimum sentence of four years and a maximum sentence of fourteen years in prison, a fine equal to at least five times the amount of the crime’s proceeds, or both.