Court grants ex-first lady, Patience Jonathan, unrestrained access to her $5.9m Skye bank account

The Federal High Court in Lagos has granted former First lady, Patience Jonathan, unrestrained access to her recently unfrozen $5.9 million. The court had on April 6th unfrozen the money which was earlier seized by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, who suspected that the funds found in a Skye bank account were proceeds from financial crimes.

The EFCC had applied for a stay of execution on the court order unfreezing her account. However at the court hearing today, counsel to EFCC, Rotimi Oyedepo, informed the court that the agency was withdrawing its application for stay of execution on the order and is also not going to appeal the order.

Counsel to Patience Jonathan, Ifedayo Adedipe, confirmed to the court that he had been served with the EFCC’s application to withdraw its application for stay of proceedings.

Adedipe also notified the court of his clients plan to withdraw the Form 48 and Form 49 he filed to cite Skye Bank for contempt of court for not allowing Patience Jonathan withdraw money from the account despite a court order unfreezing the account.

After hearing both sides, the presiding judge, Justice Olatoregun, granted the request for withdraw of their respective applications, giving Patience Jonathan unrestrained access to make withdrawals from the account.