Sunsteel MD, Adewoye, Arraigned for Alleged $680,000 Construction Materials Fraud

The Lagos Zonal Directorate 2 of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), located in Okotie-Eboh, Ikoyi, on Thursday, May 8, 2025, arraigned Olalekan Adewoye, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Sunsteel Industries Limited, before Justice Mojisola Dada of the Lagos State High Court sitting in Ikeja.

Adewoye was arraigned alongside his companies—Sunlek Investments Limited and Sunsteel Industries Limited—on a two-count charge bordering on stealing and obtaining property by false pretence to the tune of $680,622.65 (Six Hundred and Eighty Thousand, Six Hundred and Twenty-Two Dollars, Sixty-Five Cents).

One of the charges reads:
“That you, Olalekan Adewoye, Sunlek Investments Limited and Sunsteel Industries Limited, sometime between 2013 and 2014, in Lagos, within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, with dishonest intent, stole and converted to your own use the sum of $680,622.65, property of Hexagon Im-und Export GmbH & Co. KG, a German company, being the value of construction materials supplied to you. You thereby committed an offence of obtaining property by false pretence, contrary to and punishable under Section 1(1), (2), and (3) of the Advance Fee Fraud and Other Fraud Related Offences Act No. 14 of 2006.”

The defendant pleaded “not guilty” to the charges. Following his plea, the prosecution counsel, Abdulhamid L. Tukur, requested a trial date and urged the court to remand the defendant in a correctional facility.

However, defence counsel, Olusegun O. Jolaawo (SAN), informed the court of a pending bail application and appealed for his client to be granted bail. He noted that Adewoye had fully complied with the administrative bail terms earlier granted by the EFCC and had never absconded.

In her ruling, Justice Dada allowed the defendant to continue enjoying his administrative bail, directing him to deposit his international passport and documents of two landed properties with the court’s registry.

The case was adjourned to June 3 and June 19, 2025, for commencement of trial.