Ex-minister linked to slew of graft cases
NIGERIA’S former oil minister faces charges only at home but her name crops up in a growing number of international cases that lift the lid on the scale of alleged corruption in the country’s oil sector.
Since leaving office in 2015, Diezani Alison-Madueke has been implicated in bribery, fraud, misuse of public funds, and money laundering cases in Nigeria, Britain, Italy and the United States.
The first female president of the global oil cartel Opec – who was one of Africa’s most prominent politicians – has always denied the allegations, which involve billions of dollars siphoned from oil deals and state coffers. But former US State Department Nigeria specialist Matthew Page suggested that a US civil forfeiture case to seize $144-million (R1.8-billion) of assets from allegedly illgotten crude contracts may just be the start of Alison-Madueke’s legal troubles.
“Although this is the first attempt by US law enforcement to go after assets allegedly stolen by Diezani and her henchmen, it almost certainly will not be the last,” he said.
Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari, elected in 2015 on a promise to eliminate graft, has said that “mind-boggling” sums of public money were stolen by previous administrations.
Officials in Abuja say they are talking with US prosecutors about repatriating the money if the civil forfeiture claim is successful.
Alison-Madueke served under president Goodluck Jonathan from 2010 to 2015 and was Nigeria’s first female minister of petroleum resources. But her tenure was dogged by scandal. On her watch, the former central bank governor Lamido Sanusi was sacked for claiming the staterun Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) had failed to remit $20 billion (R258-billion).
In one case heard in Nigeria in February, Alison-Madueke was accused of diverting some $153-million (R1.9-billion) from the NNPC coffers. In another ongoing trial, some 23 billion naira (R942-million) of NNPC money is alleged to have been used to influence the 2015 presidential election to keep Jonathan in power. Prosecutors in Lagos last week began proceedings to recover $1.76-billion (R22.7-billion) of assets owned by Kola Aluko and Jide Omokore, whose companies were awarded oil contracts by AlisonMadueke.
A similar asset recovery case was filed last week in Houston, Texas, seeking the seizure of luxury property, including a New York apartment and super yacht, bought by the businessmen.
On Wednesday, another judge ordered the forfeiture of Alison-Madueke’s $37.5million (R484-billion) luxury Lagos property, saying it was purchased with illgotten funds. Meanwhile, Italian prosecutors allege that she and Jonathan received kickbacks from oil majors ENI and Shell as part of a $1.3-billion (R16.7-billion) deal for an offshore oil block in Nigeria.
Charges relating to the same oil block deal have also been filed against the oil majors and some senior Nigerian politicians.
Jonathan and Alison-Madueke are not named in the suit but the former president is under pressure from parliament to answer questions about the so-called Malabu deal.
Finally, Diezani-Madueke was arrested in London in October 2015 in connection with a British probe into international corruption and money laundering, but she was freed on bail.
As the international cases pile up, antigraft campaigners hope the growing body of evidence will boost current President Muhammadu Buhari’s faltering war on corruption. — AFP