Alleged N4.6b money laundering: Agbele gets N500m bail

Agbele

THE Federal High Court in Abuja yesterday granted Ekiti State Governor Ayodele Fayose’s associate Abiodun Agbele a bail of N500 million.

Justice Nnamdi Dimgba said as part of the bail conditions, “the defendant shall produce two sureties in the sum of N250 million each with prove of property ownership in either in Abuja or Lagos”.

“The sureties can be private businessmen or professionals and where they are civil servants, they should not hold a position  less than a director

“The defendant shall also deposit his international passport with the court and can only travel outside the country upon receipt of permission of the court,” Justice Dimgba said.

He added that Agbele should remain in prison custody until he was able to meet the bail condition.

Agbele and three others were arraigned on an 11-count of  money laundering by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to the tune of N4.6 billion allegedly transferred from the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) by Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd).

The other defendants are: Sylvan Mcnamara Ltd, De Privateer Ltd and Spotless Investment Ltd.

Ruling on the bail application yesterday, Justice Dimgba noted that every citizen charge is entitled to prepare for his defence in an atmosphere devoid of fear.

According to the judge, the prosecution failed to show that the defendant, if granted bail, would interfere with the course of justice or destroy evidence – a condition, which, he said, bail can be denied.

Having listened to the plea of the defence counsel to grant bail on liberal terms, Justice Dimgba noted that the terms of bail must serve certain conditions such as the defendant not fleeing before his trial and in the case of corruption, the court must show that it is playing its part in eradicating it.

When the case came up for hearing on Wednesday, Agbele pleaded not guilty to the charge, following which his lawyer, Mike Ozekhome (SAN), argued his bail application.

But the lead prosecution lawyer, Johnson Ojogbane, objected on the grounds that the Fayose’s ally would jump bail and interfere with prosecution witnesses, if granted bail.

Also a detective with the EFCC, Samson Oloje, who deposed to the counter-affidavit, described Agbele as “a flight risk” and that he has “perfected plans to flee from the country until he was arrested”.

“The applicant in conjunction with Musiliu Obanikoro (now at large) colluded to move and aid the escape of Olalekan Ogunseye, a principal suspect in this case, out of Nigeria and if released on bail, will also flee from jurisdiction.

“The defendant/applicant, prior to his arrest, was still in contact with the said Olalekan and plans have also been concluded to get the defendant out of the country by Musiliu Obanikoro and his principal, Ayodele Fayose, the Governor of Ekiti State,” Oloje said.

The matter has been adjourned till October 26 and 27 for the beginning of trial.

Culled from Nation

How everything changes about your financial life when you have a baby-Nicole Sinclair

For many women, life’s greatest source of financial stress comes with motherhood.

New expenses — along with questions about how much time to take off after a baby is born — plague many new moms today.

Kimberly Palmer, author of “Smart Mom, Rich Mom: How to Build Wealth While Raising a Family,” spoke with Yahoo Finance about some of the key financial strategies moms should think about.

“As soon as you become a mom, everything changes about your financial life,” Palmer told Yahoo Finance. “Not only are you suddenly thinking about totally different long-term goals like saving for college, but you’re also balancing all of these new day-to-day costs like childcare expenses.” She added that even smaller expenses like diapers add up over time.

Palmer explained that this is the perfect time to set up goals and a management system.

“It’s a great time when you become your mom to sit down and think about how you’re going to manage all this, how you’re going to pay for these day to day costs while also planning for the long-term goals, including your own retirement,” she said.

While a lot of motherhood advice focuses on bargain-hunting and couponing, Palmer said, the real financial decisions related to motherhood are far more complex.

“So much of what we hear as Moms is about couponing and saving a $1 here or there at the store,” she said. “Being a mom is about so much more than that. It’s about making really big and hard choices for your family about prioritizing different financial goals and setting up things like life insurance and preparing for unexpected things.”

Frugal luxury

Palmer explained that most mothers want to prioritize time with family and noted that “frugal luxury” could help make this possible.

Here’s how she defined that: “Frugal luxury to me means investing in things that give you more time with your family. It might mean doing something like spending money [on] having your groceries delivered on the weekend so you’re not spending an hour at the grocery store, making choices and tradeoffs like that that really prioritize what’s most important to you.”

Career

One of the biggest choices facing women is how much time to take off work after having a baby. Palmer said that it shouldn’t be a simple calculation of childcare costs and current income.

“If we just think short-term in terms of childcare costs, it discounts down the road what our plans will be, and how we’ll get back into the workforce if we do take time off,” she explained. “I found it’s so important for moms to think about the future and what they want out of working down the road if they return to work as their kids grow up. Even if you’re scaling back in the short-term, if you can still find ways to take on contract work or freelance work and maintain your professional networks, then you still have that control and power to ramp up when you’re ready.”

The bottom line: Financial health in motherhood is about much more than couponing. It’s about setting up long-term goals while managing new expenses. It’s also about setting an example for your kids, according to Palmer.

“It’s really important for kids to see how we’re making decisions about money … They’re watching us so closely,” she said. 

Culled from yahoo finance

What to expect when the Windows 10 Anniversary Update installs itself on your computer-David Pogue

 

Scroll back up to restore default view.

Nobody ever accused Microsoft (MSFT) of having consistent naming sequences. Let’s see: Windows versions have been named, in order, 1, 2, 3, 95, 98, 2000, ME, XP, Vista, 7, 8 and 10.

And today, there’s a new version: Windows 10 Anniversary Update. Why use three syllables when 10 will do?

Windows 10 was already very good. Beautiful, fast, coherent,and compatible with those 4 million Windows apps the world depends on. What Windows 10 AU offers, though, is mostly catchup and refinement. It’s a bunch of features that follow in Google’s and Apple’s footsteps (haters, relax — yes, we know those companies have also stolen from Microsoft), and a lot of fleshing-out of features thatwere bare-boned in the original Windows 10.

Since Windows 10 AU is free, and since every copy of Windows 10 will soon begin auto-installing the update, you may as well know what you’re getting into. Here’s a quick rundown of what you have to look forward to.

Edge browser

Microsoft’s speedy but stripped-down new web browser, Edge, has finally started to fill in its bald spots. The big news is that it can now accept extensions — feature plug-ins from other companies — just like Firefox, Chrome, and Safari can. There aren’t many so far, but the essentials — ad blockers, password memorizers and so on — are already available.

Edge can now pass along notifications (they appear with your other notifications, in the Action Center) from websites that offer them.

You can now pin a tab in Edge (shrink it to an icon that’s anchored at the left end of the tab bar), so that you can’t close it accidentally.

Finally, Edge uses up a lot less battery power than its rivals, according to Microsoft.

Log in with your face

Already, on Microsoft tablets and laptops, you can teach the special camera (an Intel RealSense camera) to recognize you, and log you in with your face. Yes, you can unlock your tablet or laptop just by looking at it — fast, clean, foolproof. (Literally. No photo, sculpture of your head, or even twin can fool this feature.)

That face recognition, along with fingerprint recognition on appropriately equipped laptops, is part of a feature called Windows Hello — and now, Microsoft says, apps and websites can use it, too. Someday soon, you could, in theory, log into your email or bank site just by looking at it.

If it catches on, that will be a huge feature. No more passwords, no more stupid Captcha puzzles to solve. You, and only you, can log in. (Your face or fingerprint is stored only on your machine, and never transmitted.)

Ink

If you were kind enough to buy a Microsoft tablet or touchscreen laptop, the company wishes to thank you by bringing you a wagon full of gifts.

You know the pen that came with your recent Surface tablet? You can now program the clicker on the top to do some cool stuff — like opening the new Ink Workspace, a collection of pen-friendly apps like Stickies, Sketchpad (for freeform drawing, featuring a virtual ruler you can use as a straightedge), Screen Annotation (lets you draw on a screenshot), and OneNote. (There’s a taskbar icon that opens this Workspace, too.)

The new Stickies app recognizes handwritten phone numbers, stock symbols, times, and web addresses (they turn blue once recognized), and offers to dial, look up, create reminders for, or open them when you tap them. That’s neat.

The best part of all of this: You can set up the pen-clicker thing to bring up the Ink Workspace even before you’ve logged in — at the Lock screen. Finally, a tablet is as useful as a legal pad. You’re suddenly getting the phone number of somebody attractive? Click your pen and start writing it down, without first logging in like some kind of painful nerd.(All of this, Microsoft says, may also work with other companies’ Bluetooth pens.)

The Start menu

Microsoft continues to tinker with the Start menu, the all-knowing oracle that gives you access to everything useful on your PC. Now, the All Programs button is gone; instead, the left side of the Start menu is your All Programs list. (The File, Settings, Power and account buttons are now tiny icons at the even farther left of the menu).

This change makes screaming sense. Every OS includes both a master list of apps and a customizable subset of the ones you use most often — think of the Home screens in Android, or the Dock on the Mac. In Windows 10, the fly-out tiles are your custom subset; the left-hand column should display the master list. You’ll fall in love with this feature fast.Too bad you can’t type-select an app’s name once the list is open, though. (You can type-select only before you’ve opened the Start menu, using the Search box.)

Cortana upgraded

Cortana still isn’t as smart as Siri or Google Now (here’s my comparison). But it’s getting steadily better. In AU, you can speak reminders that aren’t associated with a particular time or place (“Remember that my Delta frequent flyer is …”), and even add photos to them.

Apps and web pages can be programmed to add reminders directly to your list, too. For example, you can save a Map directly into Cortana’s reminder list.

Better yet, you can use certain Cortana commands at the lock screen — before you’ve even logged in. You can ask her about the news, stocks, or weather, for example, or ask her to tell you a joke. None of this is personal information, so none of it requires signing in.

Taskbar updates

If you click the clock, you now get a pop-up mini-calendar; click a number to see your appointments for that day. And if you click the volume icon, you can switch playback sources — from speakers to headphones, for example.

“Badges” can now appear on app icons, too, just as on the Mac or the iPhone, showing you (for example) how many new messages or emails have come in.Finally, the Action Center (notification list) at the right side has been redesigned— it has its own icon to the right of the clock, which sprouts a number to show you how many notifications have piled up — and so has its corresponding Settings screen.

Phone-PC communication

Apple may have introduced the world to the marvels of using your computer to send and receive calls and texts, using your smartphone as a cellular antenna. But in Windows 10 AU, Microsoft has its own version.

The idea is that if you have an Android phone with the Cortana app (or if you’re among the six people with Windows phones), all of its notifications and even low-battery alerts can now appear on your Windows desktop, as pop-up alerts. It’s pretty crude — still in beta — and making it work involves crawling through a bunch of settings on both machines. And, of course, it’s not as slick as Apple’s; for example, you can’t use your laptop or tablet as a speakerphone, as you can on Macs and iPads. But this is a start.

Lots of misc.

• Windows 10 AU reserves more slots (10 instead of 5) for ads
  among your Start-menu tiles (though you can remove them).
• Your email address no longer appears on the Lock screen.
• You can four-finger swipe between virtual desktops.
• You can now use both Microsoft’s free antivirus program
  (Windows Defender) and one that
  you’ve bought. Defender acts like a second opinion.
• New emoji symbols, including bacon and various skin shades.
• Lots of the basic starter apps have sprouted new refinements
  of their own.

Get it?

Windows 10 AU will probably install itself onto your Windows 10 machine this week, or soon; only the subtle Start menu and taskbar changes will alert you that something has changed.

Fortunately, there’s very little to dislike in the Anniversary Update. There are very few changes that make you slap your forehead and say, “Why did they DO that?!”

According to the company, 350 million people are already happily using Windows 10. And with the Anniversary Update, most of them will be even happier.

Culled from yahoo

Ambode: Eko Atlantic Will Boost Lagos Economy, Increase IGR

 

Lagos State Governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, yesterday embarked on an extensive tour of Eko Atlantic City, expressing confidence that the project would not only boost the economy of the state, but also increase its internally generated revenue (IGR).

Governor Ambode, who was accompanied on the tour by members of the State Executive Council, pledged the total commitment of his administration towards the success of the project, saying it would go a long way to facilitate the quest to grow the state’s economy.

He said: “I would like to express the total support of this government to this project because at the end of the day we need to grow the economy of Lagos and this obviously is going to have multiplier effect on our IGR.

“We promise that we are going to grow our IGR to N30 billion by 2017 and N50 billion by 2018 and this project is a sure outlet in achieving that goal.”

He also expressed satisfaction with the infrastructure already put in place, saying that it now behoves investors to take advantage of the massive opportunities.

The Eko Atlantic City project is a multi-billion dollar undertaking sitting on over 10 million square metres and is expected to accommodate over 150,000 people who would reside there and another 250,000 who would work and commute within the city on a daily basis.

While commending the promoters of the project for their confidence in committing huge resources to the Nigerian economy, Ambode said their investment was a positive sign that the country remains the investment hub in Africa.

The governor said: “Notwithstanding the economic recession that has befallen the country right now, we have come to also show that outside the recession, there is a whole lot of progress going on in the investment climate in Lagos State.

“We are very happy that the signs are looking very good for investment in Lagos. We are also very happy that we are doing everything possible to encourage investors to come into the state and I will like to assure you that we are committed to making this project a big success.”

Ambode, who also inspected the 8.5km shoreline wall, otherwise known as the “Great Wall of Lagos”, built to protect the Eko Atlantic City, said it was gratifying that the project would not only protect the new city, but also protect the whole of Victoria Island against any ocean surge, which was one of the primary reasons for the project.

He added that: “This is a new and a bigger version of Victoria Island. We are going to have an energy city here, a financial hub that is more or less going to run under a free trade zone and so on.

“Basically, all these put together turns Lagos to that leader that we want it to be in Africa and the quality of infrastructure that has been put here is also encouraging.

“I just want to encourage other investors and other people who had taken one step or the other in respect of Eko Atlantic City that the time is now, because in another one and a half years, this place will be something else.”

So far, out of the over 10 million square metres of the project, about six million square metres have been reclaimed, while there are 15 bridges and two tunnels designed with the project.

Earlier, Chairman of Eko Atlantic City, Mr. Ronald Chagoury, said one of the first two residential buildings in the new city would be completed by the end of August, while the second would be ready before the end of the year, adding that the first office block would be ready between September and October 2016.

Chagoury described the project as an impressive financial district, which upon completion, would compare with the financial district in Paris, France and the 5th Avenue in New York, United States.

He added that the Great Wall of Lagos was scientifically designed to withstand any ocean surge and that it was built to last for 1,000 years.

Also, Managing Director of Access Bank, Mr. Herbert Wigwe, whose bank is the major partner with the promoters of Eko Atlantic and the Lagos State Government, said aside the fact that adequate arrangements had been made to protect the city, the project was all about saving the state and creating a new tomorrow for people to live in Lagos.

He said that with the project, the land that was lost over time to the Bar Beach had been reclaimed, adding that investors and interested people need not entertain any fear over the safety of the city.

 

Culled from Thisday