Nigeria’s looted money in the West

When Lamido Sanusi, Nigeria’s former central bank governor, exposed in 2014 the gargantuan scale of theft at the state oil company, he made waves at home and abroad. The court in Houston that began during asset-forfeiture proceedings in July revealing where some of the “missing billions” washed up, scarcely created a ripple.

Yet the details emerging of how Nigerian funds were allegedly laundered through US and UK property via western banks are in some respects as scandalous as the original heist, even if the picture is still far from complete. The US lawsuit suggests that then oil minister Diezani Alison-Madueke and the two Nigerian traders named by US prosecutors as her accomplices flushed the proceeds of an alleged international bribery scheme with ease through US and UK jurisdictions.

In one transaction, Kola Aluko, one of two businessmen whose assets are being targeted in the civil forfeiture case, transferred $74m from a trade with commodities giant Glencore, through Standard Chartered bank, for the acquisition of the Galactica Star — one of the fastest super-yachts in the world. He, his business partner Jide Omokore and unnamed co-conspirators allegedly bought properties worth tens of millions of pounds across London, New York and Los Angeles, some allegedly for the benefit of the minister.

It is nearly 20 years since the hunt began for the late Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha’s $5bn haul of ill-gotten gains. Yet for all the laws that western governments have since armed their enforcement agencies with, the preferred destination for such tainted wealth remains unchanged. The case of Nigeria’s looted petrodollars continues to raise embarrassing questions as to how effective existing western efforts to stamp out corruption and money laundering really are. Few if any of the facilitators, be they bankers or real estate agents, have ever paid a price. London, August 3.