Brila Media, owners of Nigeria’s leading Sports Radio Network, Brila Sports is enmeshed in crisis. The Management has uncovered a huge fraud allegedly perpetrated by some staff and its former employees running to N150 millions.
Investigation revealed that the Sports Radio Management discovered that these funds were diverted by some persons in the organisation who allegedly established a similar company to manipulate the internal system through invoice fabrication and receival of payments leading to the loss of over N150 million over the last couple of years.
Brila Media Group Chief Executive Officer, Debbie Larry-Izamoje, disclosed that the alleged heist was uncovered in June 2024, prompting the management to set up an internal investigation that later unraveled the criminal activities leading to the matter being referred to the appropriate authority in August 2024.
She further explained that Management had initially decided to handle the matter in-house, without any undue publicity by allowing the security operatives to carry out their thorough investigation to identify the culprits and not punish any innocent staffer.
It was alleged that some individuals within and outside the organization had launched series of digital attacks and blackmail on the Media Group and its founder, Larry Izamoje, prompting the Management to take divisive approach by inviting Security Agents to wade into the issue.
Her words; “In the past few weeks, we have observed and endured an ill-intentioned and orchestrated campaign of calumny by a few individuals who have been found to be engaged in certain criminal activities during their engagement with our organization spanning years.
“Sequel to the discovery of criminal diversion of funds, pass-off, invoice fabrication, receival of payments, and system manipulation leading to the loss of over N150,000,000 (One Hundred and Fifty Million Naira) over the last couple of years, the matter was referred to the appropriate authority.
“Subsequently, suspects have been invited by law enforcement agents, interrogated, and confessions made. Surprisingly, some of the key actors connected to these devious and insidious activities have been engaged in digital vilification, orchestrating netizen mobs against our organization and founder Dr. Larry Izamoje in order to blackmail the company and project it as insensitive and anti-employee.
“This appears to be a defensive effort to mitigate their criminal exposure in order to escape justice. We have endured their unjustifiable malicious and digital excoriation in the past few weeks as a law-abiding organization to allow the appropriate authority to conclude their findings. We aligned with the rule of law to ensure that justice is done and no innocent person is punished unjustifiably.
“Where necessary, the indicted members of the criminal gang will be revealed as soon as it is appropriate to do so. As a premium and dedicated media organization, we remain committed to professionalism, corporate governance, and value creation that benefits our stakeholders, including our employees. However, criminality will not be condoned no matter the effort those involved put into adverse campaigns against our organization,” she stated.
According to Company’s Group CEO, “the organization has been a responsible corporate entity with none of the staff owed salaries nor any of their entitlement. But they have to dispel the concocted and falsified stories being traded on social media for face-saving by some allegedly indicted in the fleecing of the company of such a humongous amount of money”
She further revealed that despite the social media blackmail by some of the indicted staffers, some have confessed to the crime with pledges to make restitution back to the company.
She added that investigation is still ongoing as some indicted members of the syndicate yet to make themselves available for interrogation.
The Brila Media Group CEO pledged to reveal further details of the case when appropriate and ensure justice is served.
Brila Media Group is founded and owned by Veteran and renowned Sport Journalist, Larry Izamoje.
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