Alhaji Mutairu Babatunde Oriowo aka ATM, the husband of Yoruba actress Laide Bakare has said he's not involved in any fraudulent act as published in a newspaper advertorial by the EFCC. He said the EFCC publication was meant to destroy his reputation. According to him: "There was this company’s cooperative
society that approached my company to help buy five hectares of land, which we did. Later, they came to us and said they wanted five hectares more. We got for them. The subscribers now became interested in the project because they were going to make it the best of such Estates in Lagos.
“We had an agreement for me to: one, buy the lands; two, to ensure that the lands acquired were validly documented, and three, to be the sole developer of the Estate. But some powerful people at the company came in after the agreement with the aim to hijack it. They saw the project as a laudable one and were shocked that I was the only man handling the project. They came with an excuse that many people were bidding for it and it should not be a one-man thing. I had spent close to one billion naira on the project. The agreement was for me to collect 20 per cent of the money for mobilisation and then go ahead to complete it with my personal money.
“So, since the company had decided to bring in another developer and my company has committed so much into executing the project, I asked that the money I had spent so far be refunded, but when they were not forthcoming, I took the Cooperative Society to court. We got judgment from Justice Olateru-Olagbegi and then had negotiations with the company based on the court judgment. Under the terms of settlement, the company was to pay us sum of money, but the company still refused to pay us, so we commenced third-party involvement proceedings against the company which resulted in the issuance of an order freezing the bank accounts of the company."
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