Nigerian Corruption At Its Best!

April 16, 2012 10:50 pm

Ibori lived like royalty at expense of the poor

By Jane Croft in London

A former state governor of Nigeria, who became one of the country’s wealthiest and most influential men, “set about enriching himself at the expense of some of the poorest people in the world”, Southwark Crown Court has heard.

Nigerian-born James Ibori is being sentenced this week after pleading guilty to 10 offences worth about £50m at an earlier hearing. These include conspiracy to launder funds from the oil-rich Delta State and substantive counts of money laundering.

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Sasha Wass, prosecuting, outlined to the packed court Mr Ibori’s rise as a “property tycoon who led the lifestyle of royalty” from his humble origins as a cashier at a London branch of Wickes, the hardware store, where he was a “petty thief with his hand in the till”. He was convicted of stealing goods from the store in 1991.

Ms Wass told the court that Mr Ibori amassed a portfolio of six properties outside Nigeria worth £6.9m at a time he was being paid £4,000 a year as state governor of the Delta region.

The properties included a flat in St John’s Wood, a £2.2m house in Hampstead bought with cash as well as a house in Regent’s Park, a £3m mansion in South Africa and a property in Texas and one in Dorset near where his children attended private school.

He also bought a fleet of luxury cars including a Mercedes Maybach and in three years ran up £920,000 on his American Express Centurion card – a card only available to the super rich, Ms Wass told the court. In 2005 Mr Ibori instructed a London solicitor to purchase a private jet costing $20m for his private use and called himself “His Excellency” the court heard.

Ms Wass told the court he was assisted by others, including his wife, his sister, his mistress and a series of corrupt professionals including a London-based lawyer, Bhadresh Gohil, who have all been convicted in the courts.

The court heard Mr Ibori failed to declare any of his overseas property assets or multiple overseas bank accounts in any of his four sworn declarations detailing his assets as state governor.

Ms Wass told the court Mr Ibori changed his date of birth and also failed to declare his criminal conviction when standing for political office in Nigeria which would have automatically disqualified him.

Mr Ibori used six accounts at Barclays Bank as well as Swiss bank accounts to transfer the money, the court heard.

She also told the court that Mr Ibori had even unsuccessfully tried to offer a $15m cash bribe to an official at the economic and financial crimes commission in Nigeria in return for it dropping an investigation into his activities.

Ms Wass told the court that during Mr Ibori’s eight-year tenure as governor, “overinflated” contracts were awarded to Mr Ibori’s associates “as a means of siphoning money from the public purse”.

Nicholas Purnell, the barrister representing Mr Ibori told the court in mitigation that Mr Ibori was a “pioneer and everything he achieved has been threatened by the plea which he has tended”.

He also told the court that Mr Ibori had done much in improving tranparency in Delta state but “at the same time fallen prey to corruption”. Mr Ibori’s guilty plea completes a precipitous fall for a man who once ranked among the power-brokers of Africa’s most populous nation.

When the military handed power back to civilians in 1999, Mr Ibori became governor of Delta state, cementing his position among the political barons in the Niger delta, home to sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest oil and gas industry.

During eight years as governor, when he was protected from prosecution, Mr Ibori projected his influence well beyond the delta. Senior figures in the ruling People’s Democratic party said Mr Ibori came within a whisker of securing the vice-presidential ticket ahead of the 2007 polls, a lot that fell instead to Goodluck Jonathan, a lesser-known governor from the delta who is now president.

The sentencing hearing continues with the judge likely to pass sentence on Mr Ibori some time on Tuesday.

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