For over a year now, several investigations have been initiated involving businessman Akintoye Akindele, who is facing criminal prosecution in two cases and is likely to be charged with a few more. Currently, the EFCC, Senate and Fed House of Reps are investigating Akindele on a $35m investment by the NCDMB in his Atlantic refinery. Investigations reveal that there’s nothing on ground at the Atlantic refinery site despite the huge investment. It seems the case is stalling, as Akintoye himself is currently out of the country on the excuse that he is receiving treatment abroad. Our findings however reveal that he’s been crisscrossing several countries, with no sign of illness. He was spotted in the west end of London earlier this week. Before then he was in France on vacation and attended a celebrity wedding in Portugal before that.
Dr. Akindele obtained deposits from many unsuspecting people on the pretext of deploying such funds as investments in businesses, but the funds never reached the advertised businesses. Unknown to many of his ‘victims’ this has been his modus operandi as revealed by a popular artist and businessman Lanre Dabiri aka Eldee. Eldee sat down for an interview with Teju Baby face to outline how Dr. Akindele perpetrates the crime. In his case, Dr. Akindele went into a partnership with him to build an entertainment company. Akindele raised funds from various investors but the funds were never made available to the entertainment company. The company naturally died from the starvation and the investors were told that the business had failed and they all lost their money. He has repeated this cycle many times.
Dr. Akindele’s casualties include many young entrepreneurs across Africa whom he tricked into believing he would help to raise much needed funds for the growth of their businesses. He ended up taking up shares in their companies which he didn’t pay for, raised funds from various depositors which funds never got to those companies. None of the investors or entrepreneurs from South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana to Nigeria have anything positive to say about him. It’s all tales of woes. Some of these businesses also ended up folding up, while some are dealing with the negative effects of their association with him.
There are records of individual investors who gave him various sums of money which include $2 million, £1.3 million, $1.2 million, $1million and $500,000 known to us. Are these investors’ funds going to vanish without accountability? Are we, as a nation, through our established institutions, enabling businessmen like this? We hope not!
