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Ibori: Going the Way of His Women

By newswatchngr.com 21/08/2011 10:29:00

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James Onanefe Ibori, former governor of Delta State, whose wife and female business associate are now serving various prison terms in London, is set to join them there

These are not the best times for James Onanefe Ibori, former governor of Delta State. In the next few weeks, a London Court will deliver judgement on the money laundering charges against him. Many lawyers believe that the ongoing case against Ibori is an “international test case that will curtail or encourage the illicit outflow of funds from Africa.”

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, alleged that Ibori stole as much as $292 million, about N44 billion, while he was on the saddle as Delta State governor. If convicted, Ibori is expected to serve 10 years imprisonment. For now, Ibori’s fate is hanging in the balance.

His legal battle started on October 17, 2010 when a United Arab Emirate Court of Appeal sitting in Dubai ruled that Ibori be extradited to Britain to face trials for allegedly looting the treasury of Delta State during his tenure. The Dubai court verdict followed evidence-laden request from Britain and supported by Nigeria. The ex-governor was also accused of laundering his alleged loot through several British banks, using relatives, lawyers and close associates.

In 2007, a United Kingdom court froze assets belonging to Ibori worth $35 million (21million pound sterling), which is 100 times more than his annual salary as a governor for eight years. Later that year, he was held in connection with charges that he allegedly stole additional $85 million during his tenure. Ibori was also wanted in the United Kingdom on the money laundering of Delta State assets worth 70 million pound sterling.

He was first arrested in Nigeria in December 2007 and arraigned before a Federal High Court sitting in Asaba, the Delta State capital. But in 2009, Marcel Awokulehin, judge of the Federal High Court, Asaba, stunned Nigerians when he set Ibori free after throwing out the 170 charges of corruption that were brought against him by the EFCC. Awokulehin said there was no clear evidence to convict him, thereby sparking the EFCC’s resentment, which described the verdict as dubious and unconvincing. The ex-governor later went underground after he was declared wanted by the EFCC over a petition by Delta Leaders, Elders and Stakeholders Forum.

All efforts by the anti corruption agency to arrest him proved abortive as the ex-governor employed many tactics to resist arrest. At a point, his supporters attacked some policemen who tried to arrest him in his home town. On April 30, 2010, Ibori fled to Dubai where he was later arrested in his hotel room on May 12, 2010, by International Police, Interpol officials who trailed him and informed him that he was wanted for theft in London. His arrest was part of British efforts to secure his extradition on charges of alleged money laundering. He was tried and subsequently extradited to the United Kingdom, to face corruption charges, when the EFCC and the London Metropolitan Police met the conditions in the Federal Law No. (39) of 2006.

In fact, Ibori is undergoing the most upsetting period of his life. There are strong indications that he would be convicted like his accomplices in the same case. For instance, Christine Ibie-Ibori, and Udoamaka Okoronkwo-Onuigbo, sister and associate of Ibori were on June 7, 2010 sentenced to 21 years in prison in London, for their different roles in the former governor’s alleged massive corruption activities in the United Kingdom during his eight-year reign as governor of Delta State. They are to serve five years each concurrently.

The judgement followed the guilty verdicts handed down by a jury the previous week at the South Crown Court in London, after the women were found guilty of money laundering and mortgage fraud. The two women were accused and subsequently convicted of handling proceeds of criminal transactions on behalf of Ibori during the period he was in office. The 12-member jury that deliberated on the money laundering trial found Ibie-Ibori guilty on nine-count charge of money laundering and mortgage estimated at $101.5 million from Delta State into United Kingdom bank accounts, while Okoronkwo-Onuigbo, who double as Ibori’s mistress, got her five years in prison for money laundering.

Despite the pleadings from the accused counsels to the judge to tamper justice with mercy, claiming that the two women were extensively manipulated by Ibori to commit the offences on his behalf, Christopher Hardy, the judge took unprecedented step and pronounced them guilty. Hardy maintained that the two women knew what they were doing, and therefore, could not be described as victims of Ibori’s “powerful influence”. He also chided the Nigerian judiciary for allowing it to be usurped by Ibori and other powerful but corrupt politicians. Hardy contended that Nigerians were the real victims of the money laundering activities perpetrated by Ibori and his cohorts.

However, Bimpe Pogoson, the third accused and Ibori’s personal assistant, was discharged and acquitted by the panel of adjudicators.

Five months after Ibie-Ibori and Okoronkwo-Onuigbo were jailed by the Southwark Crown Court, London; the same court on Monday, November 22, 2010, sentenced Theresa Nkoyo Ibori, wife of the former governor, to a five-year jail term. The ex-governor’s wife was convicted for her role in Ibori’s alleged looting of public funds during his tenure. During the trials, Sasha Wass, the lead prosecutor, told the jury that Theresa paid 2.2 million pound sterling in cash for a swanky home in Hampstead less than two years after her husband became governor. Wass maintained that Theresa was aware of the fraudulent nature of the transaction since her husband put her in charge of it. The prosecutor described the fraudulent acquisition of the Hampstead property “as the beginning of Theresa’s rise to extreme wealth”. The prosecutors alluded to Ibori’s pervasive influence over the entire Nigerian government structure to buttress their point that the two women were too insignificant to have rejected his overtures.

Ibori is not new to court cases, controversy and convictions. On November 8, 2005, Justice Hussein Muktar of the Abuja High Court in the ex-convict case ruled that Ibori was never at any time convicted by the Bwari Upper Area Court. The suit stemmed from the judgement of the Supreme Court of Nigeria in suit No. SC.97/2003 wherein the Apex Court found that one James Onanefe Ibori was convicted and sentenced by the Upper Area Court, Bwari, FCT, for negligent conduct and criminal breach of trust in case No. Cr-81-1995 in September, 1995. The Supreme Court then ordered a trial “de novo” for the purpose of determining the identity of the person convicted by the court and whether such convicted person was the former governor. But Muktar dismissed the case in Ibori’s favour “for want of evidence.”

Ibori was allegedly convicted in the United Kingdom, for petty theft a few years before he was elected governor. Again, in 1994, Ibori was investigated by the United States law enforcement agents over his million-dollar deposit in an American bank. At the end of the investigation, Ibori allegedly forfeited $400, 000 out of the amount to the US government having lied that he received the funds for consultancy work. That was the beginning of a chilling story of a man with pervasive desire to amass wealth at the expense of the masses he was elected to serve.

However, his political associates and apologists believe that Ibori’s travails came as a result of affront to ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo and President Goodluck Jonathan. Ibori was said to have led a group of governors to prevail on Atiku Abubakar, former vice-president to upstage his boss in the 2003 Peoples Democratic Party’s presidential primaries. He was also said to have incurred the wrath of Jonathan when he joined some ministers to prop up the late President Musa Yar’Adua in power and obstructed the transfer of executive power to his deputy then (Jonathan) when it was glaring that Yar’Adua was incapacitated. They insisted that the Jonathan administration was out to cut the ex-governor to size.

Newswatch learnt that the Senate is currently working to amend a bill which would facilitate the deportation of Nigeria prisoners serving various jail terms in foreign prisons. The existing law provides that such persons cannot be deported back home to finish their sentences without their consent. Ibori’s associates said the aim of the amendment was to humiliate Ibori by having him deported to serve or finish his jail term in one of the horrible prisons in anticipation of his conviction by a British court. “With the over congested jails and primitive prison conditions coupled with the government cash strapped to build new modern prisons, prisoners in more ambient environment will not find it easy to be in Nigeria. It will be Ibori’s political humiliation by having him deported to finish his jail term in one of the horror chambers called prisons in anticipation of his conviction by a British court”, said Tiko Emmanuel Okoye, a newspaper columnist.