Oil barons guilty of fraud in £230m deal
Afren bosses spent laundered cash on luxury homes in the Caribbean
TWO greedy oil barons who used a dodgy £232m business deal to line their own pockets face jail.
Osman Shahenshah and Shahid Ullah, the former bosses of one-time London stock market darling Afren, have been found guilty of fraud and money laundering after a three-year investigation by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO).
The pair convinced the company’s board of directors to press ahead with an oil deal that saw one of its partner firms in Nigeria paid £232m. They then siphoned off 15pc of the funds, or £35m, and bought luxury properties in the British Virgin Islands and Mustique.
Some of the cash was also used to pay a close network of Afren staff, dubbed ‘The A Team’.
Lisa Osofsky, director of the SFO, said: ‘Greed motivated this crime. Shahenshah and Ullah failed in their duties as company directors, abused their positions and lied to their board.
‘Instead of acting in their company’s best interests, they used Afren like a personal bank account to fund an illicit deal, with no regard for the consequences.
‘Fraud corrodes confidence, undermines trust and damages the reputation of the UK at home and abroad. It is our mission to bring those committing this crime to justice.’
Afren, founded in 2004, was a stock market darling which at its height employed around 450 people in six countries and was valued at more than £2bn. It went into administration in July 2015 after failing to secure support for a refinancing and restructuring.
Shahenshah, 56, was earning £6.6m a year as chief executive of Afren, while Ullah, 59, was on £3.8m as chief financial officer, Southwark Crown Court heard. But they faced a pay cut after a rebellion by shareholders over the size of their awards.
Following the revolt, the two hatched a plan to secretly increase their pay.
They recommended that the Afren board agree to pay £232m to Oriental Energy Resources, its oilfield partner in Nigeria.
But they failed to disclose they had already struck a side deal from which they would personally benefit. Around £ 35m of the money was transferred to a shell company in the British Virgin Islands called Ntiti Ltd, a firm which was controlled by the defendants. Shahenshah bought a mansion on Mustique, the Caribbean island ( pictured above) where the Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret, was famous for throwing wild parties, while Ullah purchased a villa in the British Virgin Islands. The pair were fired by Afren after an independent review in 2014 found evidence of gross misconduct. They did not dispute the facts of the case – such as the side deal and the transfer of money – but disagreed with the SFO over the motive and reasoning behind their actions.
Both denied fraud and money laundering charges and maintained their actions were not dishonest or an abuse of their positions, claiming they were working for the good of the company, rather than personal gain.
The SFO has spent more than three years on the investigation and trial, focusing on some 76,000 documents, including emails, phone records and bank statements, and interviewing about 30 individuals. The criminal investigation began in June 2015.
Shahenshah and Ullah will be sentenced at Southwark Crown Court on Monday.
They were found not guilty on a separate charge relating to a management buyout of another of Afren’s business partners.