The police have commenced investigations into the alleged professional misconduct, abuse of office, and extortion of N22m worth of Bitcoin from two realtors by some policemen in Lagos State.
The Force Public Relations Officer, Frank Mba, in a statement on Monday, said the IG set up a Special Investigation Panel to probe the allegations.
Two Lagos residents, Morakinyo Peter and Yusuf Dayo, had in a petition narrated how one DSP Cordelia Nwanue and other officers attached to the Force Criminal Investigation Department Annex, Alagbon Close, Lagos State, allegedly extorted the money from them after threatening to kill them.
The petitioners said they were driving on the Ikoyi-Ajah Expressway on July 14, 2021, when a team of police officers in mufti stopped them and demanded their phones.
They wrote, “Since we had nothing to hide, we gave them our phones and they found nothing incriminating. To our surprise, they ordered us to drive down to their office; we insisted we must know our offences before we would move down to the station.
“But the police officers descended on us and beat us for disobedience. They claimed we were too fresh not to be fraudsters. We begged them and showed them that we were realtors. We gave them our identity cards and showed them some of our ongoing projects, but they insisted we were fraudsters.”
Consequently, Nwanue and the other personnel were ordered to report to the SIP, Force Headquarters, Abuja, today (Tuesday).
The statement said, “The Force advises any member of the public who has had similar experiences of high-handedness or extortion by the officer in question, her team or any other officer at the FCID Alagbon to come forward with detailed information to enable the panel to achieve a holistic investigation.”
It was gathered that the panel was headed by a pioneer investigator at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, DCP Olaolu Adegbite.
