The Managing Director of Stallion Group, Harprrie Singh has been arrested by operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for allegedly making N1.3 billion ‘questionable payment’ to former Minister of State for Finance, Bashir Yuguda.
National Daily gathered that Stallion’s name cropped up when investigators were looking into some of the transactions of the embattled former NSA, Dasuki with Jabbama Company, a bureau de change operator. It was discovered that Stallion Group also paid N1.375billion to the company, although N100million of the money was later returned, leaving a balance of N1.275billion.
Investigation further revealed that Jabbama converted the money into United States Dollars ($114,750,000) and handed it to Mr. Yuguda, former minister of state for finance, who is already being prosecuted on multiple charges of fraud and money laundering.
Mr. Yuguda was said to have explained to EFCC interrogators that the N1.175billion received from the Stallion Group was at the instance of former NSA, Dasuki, for political purposes.
Singh told investigators that the automotive arm of the Stallion Group, Stallion Motors, had a $170million contract with the ONSA to supply some vehicles and that, he had already supplied the first batch of 50 vehicles since November 2014 for which he was yet to be paid.
A source within the Commission said Singh actually confessed that the money he gave to Mr. Yuguda was at the request of both Messrs Dasuki and Yuguda, to support their party.
The Stallion Group, owned by the Vaswani brothers, is one of the major companies currently being questioned by the EFCC as part of the ongoing investigation into the messy arm procurement scandal in the office of a former National Security Adviser, Colonel Sambo Dasuki (rtd).