Hushpuppi: US Court Fixes Date For Abba Kyari’s Fraud Trial

The trial of a suspended top Nigerian police officer, Abba Kyari, and five others, for alleged $1.1 million fraud coordinated by Ramon Abbas, aka Hushpuppi, has been fixed for October 2022, by a court in the United State.

The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California rescheduled the trial from May to October 2022 based on a joint request by the prosecution and three of Mr Kyari’s co-defendants.

Despite the uncertainties plaguing the extradition proceedings filed against Mr Kyari at the Federal High Court in Abuja, where he is also undergoing trial on cocaine-trafficking charges, the US court expects to have Mr. Kyari in October, six months from now.

Ruling, the judge, Otis Wright, agreed that not granting the parties’ request could “deny defence counsel the reasonable time necessary for effective preparation, taking into account the exercise of due diligence.”

He also said it would unreasonably deny defendant continuity of counsel and could make proceeding impossible or result in a miscarriage of justice if the court rejected the postponement request.

The judge, therefore, postponed the trial from May 17, 2022, until October 11, 2022.

“Defendants shall appear in Courtroom 5D of the Federal Courthouse, 350 W. 1st Street, Los Angeles, California on October 11, 2022, at 9:00 a.m.,” the judge ordered in the ruling.

The ruling made it the second postponement of the trial, which the court originally scheduled to start on October 12, 2021. But based on the parties’ request, the court had shifted the trial to May 17, 2022, and, in the latest ruling, to October 11, 2022.

The three co-defendants who joined the prosecution to call for the postponement are all U.S.-based.

The three co-defendants – Rukayat Fashola (aka Morayo), Bolatito Agbabiaka (aka Bolamide), and Yusuf Anifowoshe (aka AJ and Alvin Johnson) – have been released from custody on bail ahead of trial.

“The rest of the defendants – Kyari, Abdulrahman Juma, and Kelly Chibuzo Vincent are outside the U.S. and “remain at large”, the U.S. prosecuting authorities have said.

The prosecution planned to conclude the trial within six days even with Kyari and two of the defendants still at large.

In justifying the application for postponement of the trial in their joint application last year, the applicants said the U.S. government had already handed to the defence approximately 2.31 GB of data comprising 2,707 electronic files.

They added that prosecutors were processing approximately 6,773 pages of additional discovery expected to be produced for the trial.

Back in Nigeria, Kyari faces a just-starting trial on charges of illegal dealing in cocaine, alongside the extradition proceedings recently filed against him based on the U.S. government’s request to Nigeria to surrender him for trial in California.

While he was on suspension over his indictment for fraud by the U.S. government last year, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) arrested him in February, and subsequently charged him and six others, including four members of his former police unit, with illegal dealing in cocaine.

Both the criminal trial on narcotic offences and extradition hearing are taking place separately before two judges of the Federal High Court in Abuja.

At its current pace, the extradition hearing, hobbled by the country’s unwieldy judicial process, is unlikely to end before October when the trial in the U.S is expected to start.