A FEDERAL High Court sitting in Abuja, today, sentenced two former top officials of the Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS) to five years imprisonment each for falsification of income tax clearance certificate with serial number 05027875 and file number ABJ/PIT/07/CAITO/380 for unsuspecting tax payers.
The convicts, Mohammed Adamu and Eunice Okoro Udokamma were said to have to collected a paltry sum of N120,000 to forge the certificat with the signature of one MD Naanmiap, a Tax Controller with FIRS and presented same as genuine to one Vincent Enoghase for 2004, 2005 and 2006 tax period.
Justice Inyang Eden Ekwo in a judgment on the 5-count charge brought against the two by the Federal Government found them guilty in all the charges and sentenced them to one year in each of the counts without option of fine.
However, due to passionate plea from their lawyers, Justice Ekwo ordered that the sentence should run concurrently.
By the court order, Mohammed Adamu, a dismissed staff of the FIRS will spend one year behind the bar beginning from Wednesday, April 27, 2022, while Eunice Okoro Udokamma, a house wife and mother of three children, will spend one year in prison without option of fine but beginning from April 13, 2010 when she was arrested and made to spend over two and half years in detention.
Justice Ekwo held that the offence committed by the convicts which is contraven section 49 (1) of the FIRS Act No 13 of 2007, was proved beyond reasonable doubt by the Federal Government lawyer, James Binang, a Deputy Director, Legal Service for the FIRS.
The Judge held that the convicts failed to counter the evidence adduced by the six witnesses of the prosecution when given opportunity to offer their defense.
