Posted by By Tony Amokeodo with agency report on
Despite the payment of a $26,000 fine, there were indications on Wednesday that four US departments may still probe Dr. Andy Uba, a former Senior Special Assistant (Domestic Affairs) to President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Despite the payment of a $26,000 fine, there were indications on Wednesday that four US departments may still probe Dr. Andy Uba, a former Senior Special Assistant (Domestic Affairs) to President Olusegun Obasanjo.
The four departments, according to Empowered Newswire, are the Homeland Security Department; the Immigrations; the Customs Services; and the Secret Service.
Empowered Newswire quoted a US Government attorney, Ms Leslie Westphal, as saying that the payment of the fine had 'no effect on any other claim by any US agency or department" against Uba.
She added that the agreement also had 'no effect on any claims that any other department or agency in the US may have against Loretta Mabinton (Uba's girlfriend) and Emmanuel Uba."
A US district court in Portland, Oregon, found Uba and Mabinton guilty on September 27, 2007 of money laundering.
Apart from forfeiting the $26,000, a Mercedes Benz 2003 S-Class was seized from him.
The court ruled that the car was part of the proceeds from the $170,000 smuggled into the US by Uba in a presidential jet on September 23, 2003.
The court records also showed that $46,000 of the laundered money was used to buy farm equipment for Obasanjo Farms in Ota, Ogun State.
Westphal , who signed an agreement with Uba's lawyer, Mr. Douglas Stringer, after the $26,000 fine was paid, added that if the former presidential aide had been a US citizen, he would have been sued for tax evasion by the Internal Revenue Service.
Westphal further disclosed that before the payment of the fine, Uba had in February 2006 forfeited to the Homeland Security Department $10,500, which was part of the laundered $170,000 deposited in a bank in Oregon by Mabinton.
Westphal said that the $10,500 was a penalty that the former presidential aide had to pay for bringing in money above $10,000 without declaring it.
According to her, the Secret Service began probing Uba when it was found that a $100 fake note was part of the sum she deposited with the bank in Oregon.
In the complaints against Uba and his girlfriend, the Secret Service hinted that Uba had been under surveillance before and was actually under investigation as a 'previous subject of a Nigerian advance fee fraud(419) scheme investigation."
Sources said the former presidential aide might still be under surveillance if allowed into the US again as his record with US law enforcement authorities were being updated.
Fresh facts have, however, emerged on why Uba resigned from Obasanjo's cabinet.
Sources in Abuja told our correspondents on Wednesday that the resignation was a last-minute decision by Uba to manage the scandal .
One of the sources said that immediately the story broke, top Presidency officials called on Obasanjo who was then in South Korea to brief him.
'His (Obasanjo) reaction was that of shock and disbelief," the source claimed.
Another source said that the President was so angry with Uba because of the mention of the presidential jet and Obasanjo Farms in the scam.
The President was said to have made up his mind that the best way to wriggle out of the scandal was for Uba to vacate office.
But a source close to Uba said, 'The resignation has no link with the matter in the US. Oga resigned on November 1, 2006 before the case became a public issue."
Commenting on the development, a US-based Nigerian international lawyer, Mr. Kayode Oladele, said, 'Uba's case is not different from former Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha's money laundering case.
'The only difference is in the amount of money involved and the jurisdictions where the crimes took place.
'The thing is that in the US, federal authorities can bargain with an offender and ask the person to plead guilty to lesser charges in return for other things.
'In Uba's case, the Feds as we call them, only decided to seize the Mercedes Benz which he bought with the money instead of charging him with a criminal offence.
'This happens quite often in the US, particularly when one is just a first offender. But it does not mean that he did not commit the offence."
Meanwhile, two Senior Advocates of Nigeria - Prof. Itse Sagay and Chief Wole Olanipekun - have advised Uba to forget his governorship ambition.
The legal practitioners said though Uba's conviction for money laundering in the US was a civil matter, they insisted that the offence was criminal in Nigeria.
The lawyers spoke during separate interviews with our correspondents in Lagos on Wednesday.
The legal practitioners reminded Uba that he had no moral ground to contest the 2007 poll, having worked with a government that initiated anti-graft war.