The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia has issued an arrest warrant for Ejiroghene Eghagha, Chief of Finance and Administration for Nigerian airline Air Peace, branding her a fugitive and mandating her custody before trial.
This development comes as Allen Onyema, Air Peace’s CEO and founder, faces fresh criminal charges related to a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme.
Onyema’s troubles began in 2019 when the U.S. Attorney’s office accused him of bank and wire fraud for raising letters of credit to buy Boeing aircraft that he had already purchased.
He allegedly established Springfield Aviation, hired an unqualified manager, and submitted fake documents to U.S. banks to secure financing for the same aircraft.
As U.S. and Canadian accounts holding millions were frozen, Onyema and Eghagha created a fraudulent contract, backdating it to appear legitimate, and submitted it to the U.S. Attorney’s office in an effort to avoid forfeiture of their assets.
This act of falsifying documents led to new charges of obstructing justice against Onyema and Eghagha.
The superseding indictment alleges that Onyema used his airline company as a cover to commit fraud on the United States’ banking system, and then attempted to derail the government’s investigation.
Previous Charges Against Onyema
Onyema was accused of moving over $20 million from Nigeria through U.S. bank accounts using false documents based on the purchase of airplanes, Money Laundering of over $3 million of the funds used to purchase aircraft allegedly came from bank accounts for Onyema’s non-profit organizations and he was charged with committing aggravated identity theft in connection with the scheme.
The case against Onyema and Eghagha is part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) operation, which identifies, disrupts, and dismantles high-level criminal organizations.
BY Daniel Bampoe