Ibori gets his prize today

By The Nation: OLUKOREDE YISHAU

 

 Ibori

Since he left the Government House, Asaba on May 29, 2007 as a two-term governor of Delta State, James Onanefe Ibori has been facing corruption-related litigations. Though he was discharged and acquitted of all corruption charges by a Federal High Court sitting in Asaba, it has been a different ball game at a London Southwark Crown Court, where he pleaded guilty to money laundering charges. The court will today sentence Ibori, writes OLUKOREDE YISHAU

All eyes are on the London's Southwark Crown Court, where former Delta State Governor James Onanefe Ibori will  get his prize for a life of fraud. He will be sentenced.
In February, he admitted stealing tens of millions of pounds from the oil-rich Delta State so much that he became known as the ‘oil sheik’. 
Less than two decades after he  worked as an employee at the DIY store and few years after quitting his £5,000-a-year job as a cashier for Wickes, Ibori had become one of Nigeria’s most influential and richest politicians.
Before his emergence as governor, he was an ally of the military regime of the late Gen. Sani Abacha. Not much was known of his life before his romance with the Abacha regime through Maj. Hamza al-Mustapha, Abacha’s Chief Secretary Officer (CSO). But not anymore. His story, from his days as s store keeper in the United Kingdom, to the time he returned home and his tenure as governor are now open books, being read by all. It is now an open secret that he used a false date of birth to conceal previous convictions in the United Kingdom when he ran for governorship. 
Antony Goldman, a journalist who worked in Nigeria, said  Ibori offered services to Abacha. Goldman said: “He had an unspecified role in security. That could be anything, it was a very murky business.”
He said in the mid-1990s, Ibori was questioned by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) in the United States (US) about how he came into the possession of millions of dollars that he transferred to accounts in the US.
The FBI, he said, suspected the money came from advance fee fraud and was able to prove the money came from his work with Abacha.
Ibori, whose address in England was given as Primrose Hill in North London, worked  as a cashier in a branch of a DIY store in Ruislip, Middlesex and was found guilty of stealing goods from the Wickes store. He was caught by his employer allowing his wife, Theresa, walk through the till he was manning without paying for goods. They both pleaded guilty at Isleworth Crown Court and were fined. In 1992, he was convicted for possession of a stolen credit card, which had £1,000 spent on it, and was again fined.
He knew his past could catch up with him. So, in 1999, when Ibori took out a mortgage on a property in Abbey Road, London, he got a new passport with a false birth date to mask his previous convictions. The birth date he chose was only a month after his sister’s birthday, which the prosecution told the court was medically impossible. He paid off the house immediately he became governor. 
The decision of the court today will help the British government decide what to do with Ibori’s multi-billion naira assets in the UK. Will they be confiscated or returned to Nigeria? Today’s judjment will determine. His eralier guilty plea to charges of conspiracy to defraud lessened the burden of the court. 
Ibori, 49, admitted stealing money from Delta State and laundering it in London through a number of offshore companies. Ibori admitted to fraud totalling more than $79 million, said to be part of total embezzlement that could exceed $250 milion.
Investigation revealed he bought six properties in London, including a six-bedroom house with indoor pool in Hampstead for £2.2 million and a flat opposite the nearby Abbey Road recording studios.
He also bought a property in Dorset, a £3.2 million mansion in South Africa and further real estate in Nigeria.
Prosecution said he owned a fleet of armoured Range Rovers costing £600,000 and a £120,000 Bentley. On one of his several trips to London, he was said to have bought a Mercedes Maybach for over £300,000 at a dealer on Park Lane and shipped it to South Africa.
He also bought a private jet for £12million, spent £126,000 a month on his credit cards and ran up a £15,000 bill for a two-day stay at the Lanesborough hotel in London.
Prosecutor Sasha Wass told the court Ibori had accepted he was involved in “wide-scale theft, fraud and corruption when he was governor of Delta State”.
Wass added: “Mr Ibori tricked his way into public office. He had tricked the Nigerian authorities and the Nigerian voters. He was thus never the legitimate governor of Delta State. He was never the legitimate governor and there was effectively a thief in government house. As the pretender of that public office, he was able to plunder Delta State’s wealth and hand out patronage.” 
Detective Inspector Paul Whatmore of the Metropolitan Police  said: “We are pleased with today’s guilty pleas which mark the culmination of a seven-year inquiry into James Ibori’s corrupt activities. We will now be actively seeking the confiscation of all of his stolen assets so they can be repatriated for the benefit of the people of Delta State.
“It is always rewarding for anyone working on a proceeds of corruption case to know that the stolen funds they identify will eventually be returned to some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world.”
Prosecution said as governor, Ibori racked up credit card bills of $200,000 monthly and owned a fleet of armoured Range Rovers. He was trying to buy a plane for £20 million at the time he was arrested. 
The ex-governor’s wife, Theresa, sister, Christine Ibori-Idie, mistress, Udoamaka Okoronkwo, and London-based solicitor Bhadresh Gohil were earlier convicted of money-laundering. 
His ‘travail’ was funded by the  Britain’s Department for International Development (DfID) at a cost of approximately £750,000 a year. The Metropolitan Police’s Proceeds of Corruption unit (POCU) began investigating Ibori in 2005, collaborating with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission EFCC).
He was arrested by the EFCC in December 2007, but two years later a court in Asaba, dismissed the charges, saying there was not enough evidence. The case was reopened in April 2010; Ibori fled to Dubai United Arab Emirate (UDE) where he was detained at the request of the Metropolitan Police and extradited to the UK last April.
Britain’s International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell  said: “We are committed to rooting out corruption wherever it is undermining development, and will help bring its perpetrators like Ibori to justice and return stolen funds to help the world’s poorest.
Mitchell said: “Funding investigations such as these help to recover valuable stolen funds which can be returned to Nigeria to be used for development. Doing this is making a major contribution to Nigeria’s development, on a scale far in excess of the cost of the investigation itself. It is good value for Nigeria and for the British taxpayer.”