If she fails to explain the origin of almost $20m traced to her, Patience Jonathan, wife of the former President Goodluck Jonathan may have to forfeit her alleged N10bn hotel.

“This is one of the questions she may have to answer as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission continues investigation into the $20m found in five accounts she has laid claim to,” a source told Punch on Monday.

Aridolf hotel, according to The Financial Times was well-furnished to compete with luxury hotels.

“The Aridolf Hotel in Yenagoa is an unlikely monument to kitsch on a reclaimed swamp in Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta. In the lobby, Louis XIV furniture is accompanied by bowls of plastic fruit, faux Dutch landscapes and a grotesquely gaudy chandelier. The hotel is redolent of the riches on display in a region that for half a century has generated the bulk of Nigeria’s wealth.

“The Aridolf, which is owned by Patience Jonathan, wife of the former President, is symptomatic of how superficial progress has been in addressing the festering sense of marginalisation in the region, which remains desperately impoverished despite benefiting from a tide of petrodollars in recent years,” the report dated April 21, 2015, stated.

Patience recently sued Skye Bank and the EFCC for freezing four company accounts which have a balance of $15m.

EFCC had discovered four company accounts registered with Skye Bank using names of domestic staff of a former Special Adviser to the President on Domestic Affairs, Waripamowei Dudafa, and a fifth one registered in Patience’s name.

The EFCC has since frozen the accounts.

One of the Skye Bank staff who is being questioned by the EFCC, Demola Bolodeoku has said through his lawyer, Joseph Okobieme, that he did not take part in forging the signatures of the domestic servants/directors.

He said, “I don’t know why he was included in the charge. He has no business in this transaction. He was merely doing his job as a banker. The allegation they levelled against him was not that he benefitted from the proceeds of the alleged transaction.

“There is a mere allegation of forgery of certain documents which are not within his power to have forged because he is not a director of the company.

“These four companies were duly registered by the CAC (Corporate Affairs Commission) with the names and the directors on record. So, if they say the names of these directors were forged, it is not possible for my client to have forged them. Clearly, he was not the author of the documents.”

Azeez