A Federal High Court sitting in Lagos has convicted and sentenced Nollywood filmmaker and producer, Olajide Kareem, otherwise known as Seun Egbegbe, to seven years imprisonment ‘with hard labour’ for multimillion naira fraud.
The court convicted and sentenced Egbegbe on Tuesday, after convicting him of one of the 40-count charges filed against him by the police.
Daily Trust newspaper reports trial began on February 10, 2017, and on Tuesday, October 11, Justice Oguntoyinbo found Egbegbe guilty of count 19 of the 40-count charge filed against him and set him free.
The court, however, set Mr. Kareem free because he had exceeded the imprisonment time in detention.
The presiding judge, Justice Oluremi Oguntoyinbo also freed the four other defendants.
Justice Oguntoyinbo declared that 39 of the 40 counts crumbled because of a lack of witnesses to substantiate their claims.
She also decried that the prosecuting team failed in the responsibility to produce evidence, to be backed with witnesses on counts 4, 19 and 21.
The judge also said that police tampered with the money recovered from the suspects and ruled that all the money recovered from Egbegbe as evidence should be returned to him.