A tax consultancy firm, Alpha Beta, has denied allegations raised by its former Managing Director, Dapo Apara, against the National leader of All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, a former commissioner in Lagos, Akin Doherty, and the company, just as it alleged that Apara was relieved of his duties over corrupt practices.
The tax firm added that Apara was sacked in 2018 after an investigation revealed that he allegedly converted over N6 billion belonging to the company to personal use and that the financial expert misappropriated the firm funds.
Alpha-Beta claims came hours after Apara, in a writ of summons, alleged that Tinubu, Doherty, and the company allegedly engaged in money laundering, fraud, tax evasion, and other sundry corruption issues.
In a response to the allegations raised by the former Alpha-Beta boss, Doherty, who is the company’s Managing Director, urged the public to disregard claims raised by Apara and that the company relieved him of his duties after it became obvious that he could not be managed.
The managing director, on Friday, further argued that Apara allegedly used his position to siphon huge sums of money from the company including converting $5 million, a fund said to have been used to pay for cloud-based services that were eventually discovered to be worth less than $300,000.
Doherty, through a statement made available to The Guild, hinted that Apara, who was a signatory to all the bank accounts of Alpha Beta from inception until his removal, received all his payments and entitlements until June 2018 when he was removed after his fraudulent misconduct was uncovered.
He said: “This fraud was reported to the authorities and Mr. Apara was subsequently invited to return to Nigeria from his hiding place in Dubai to render an account. To date, he has refused to do so. Instead, Mr. Apara chose to embark on an aggressive smear campaign seemingly in an effort to blackmail us into ending the investigations into his misconduct”.
The managing director added that the recent court action by Apara was continuation of the blackmail tactics adopted by the former staff to distract the public from the huge funds misappropriated under his tenure before 2018.
He further described the writ of summons as an extension of his campaign of calumny; launched to avoid the consequences of his fraudulent conduct over the years that he piloted Alpha-Beta affairs.
“Since 2018, he has filed many suits in Lagos and Abuja on the same matter, engaged in Arbitration, the Police, EFCC and ICPC. However, in all that time, he has steadfastly refused to honour all invitations by the authorities to return to Nigeria and account for the huge funds he misappropriated.
“The uncorroborated allegations against Asiwaju Bola Tinubu by Dapo Apara, in particular, show that he is bent only on creating sensational headlines to deflect attention from his on criminal activities.
“Although, we have not been served with the court summons, we look forward to the opportunity the case provides to publicly present the full picture of Mr. Apara’s misconduct, deceit, and fraud and to have the matter resolved by the court once and for all”.
