Tunde Bakare
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, on Tuesday, November 5, 2024, presented its third prosecution witness, PW3, Bamaiyi Mairiga, a forensic expert in the Forensic Department of the EFCC Headquarters, Abuja, in the trial of one Babatunde Keshinro, a former Head, Commercial Banking with one of the new generation banks in Nigeria, for an alleged N10m fraud before Justice I.O.Ijelu of the Lagos State High Court sitting in Ikeja.
The EFCC is prosecuting Keshinro on a nine-count charge bordering on forgery and stealing to the tune of N10million.
He was initially standing trial before Justice Oluwatoyin Taiwo of the Special Offences Court sitting in Ikeja, Lagos before whom he pleaded “not guilty” to the charges.
However, the trial could not be concluded before the retirement of the trial judge.
The case was, thereafter, transferred to Justice Ijelu.
The defendant, again, pleaded “not guilty” to the charge.
At Tuesday’s proceedings, the witness, led in evidence by the prosecution counsel, H.U. Kofarnaisa, narrated the role the Forensic Department played in the investigation of the alleged offence.
Mairiga noted that he did know the defendant and only used international standard techniques to forensically analyse the documents forwarded to the Department from the Lagos Zonal Command of the EFCC.
“As a trained Forensic Document Examiner that has undergone foreign training, I am skilled in forensic analysis of travel documents, analysis of alterations and signatures, among others,” he said.
According to him, the Forensic Department got the request for the analysis of some signatures for further comparison.
“When the Department got the request, we carried out detailed forensic examinations in line with best international practices; and after the analysis, we made our report as a response to the request,” he said.