Alleged fraud: How Akawu spent $135,000 IAAF money –ICPC

The Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission on Monday gave a breakdown of how the Secretary General of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria, Mr. Amaechi Akawu, collected the excess $135,000 mistakenly sent by the International Association of Athletics Federation to the AFN.

IAAF had mistakenly sent $150,000 as grant to the AFN instead of $15,000 in 2018. But instead of returning the extra $135,000 to IAAF, Akawu allegedly collected the funds in tranches from the AFN’s board account.

A statement signed by the spokesperson for the ICPC, Rasheedat Okoduwa, said Akawu was detained on October 22 following his arrest and was subsequently released on administrative bail the next day to enable him submit some vital documents that were requested by investigators handling the case.

It stated that the AFN secretary-general got several approvals from the federation’s board for the release of the money through a series of letters to the former Minister of Youths and Sports Development, Solomon Dalung.

ICPC said, “On different occasions, he requested for and got approval for the release of N30.4m, N4.9m and $20,000 all in the month of July, 2017 as expenses for the competition. He also requested for N9.5m in the same period, but N5m was approved by the then Permanent Secretary.

“Akawu is yet to furnish the commission with the evidence of the expenditures, telling investigators that he had submitted all the documents relating to how the $130,000 was spent by AFN to the registry in the office of the minister.”

The commission said despite a letter from IAAF requesting for the return of the excess funds, AFN refused to obey the directive, with Akawu stating that the funds were spent to host a competition in Delta State.

“AFN is yet to refund the excess fund with Akawu as the secretary-general, claiming that the entire $130,000 was spent on hosting the competition that held in July 2017.” Punch