In an unprecedented move, the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari has made bold to directly accuse his predecessor, former President Goodluck Jonathan and his then oil minister, Diezani Alison Madueke of accepting bribes and breaking Nigerian laws to broker a $1.3 billion oil deal eight years ago, according to court filings in London reviewed by Huhuonline.com. The government however did neither stated the specific amounts of the bribes collected; nor the person who paid the bribes.
Lawyers for the Nigerian government, in filings advancing a London commercial court suit brought by the federal government against two oil majors – Royal Dutch Shell and Italian oil giant, Eni, said Jonathan and Madueke conspired to “receive bribes and make a secret profit,” while short-changing the Nigerian government from getting what it was owed from the deal. “Bribes were paid,” the filing, reviewed by Huhuonline.com noted. It says “the receipt of those bribes and the participation in the scheme of said officials was in breach of their fiduciary duties and Nigerian criminal law.”
The deal, in which Shell and Eni jointly acquired the rights to the lucrative OPL 245 offshore oilfield, has spawned legal cases spanning several countries. The 2011 deal is also the subject of a corruption trial in Milan in which two middlemen have been convicted and former and current Shell and Eni officials are also on trial. The London lawsuit relates to payments that Shell and Eni made to acquire the license. The companies transferred more than $1 billion to the Nigerian government, according to the filing. Milan prosecutors have argued in their case that the bulk of that money was sent on to Malabu Oil and Gas, which was controlled by another former oil minister, Dan Etete.
Eni and Shell retain the rights to develop the field, which has yet to enter production but is one of the biggest untapped oil resources in Africa, with reserves estimated at 9 billion barrels. An Eni spokesman said the Italian firm was assessing whether UK courts had jurisdiction on a case of “such duplication” to the Milan proceedings and repeated its view on “the correctness and compliance of every aspect of the transaction.”
In the London court filing, the Nigerian government said it only received a $209 million signature bonus in relation to the deal, and that it estimates the value of the oilfield to have been “at least $3.5 billion”. It said it would seek to calculate damages on that basis. The Nigerian government has also filed another case in London against US bank JPMorgan for its role in transferring over $800 million of government funds to Etete, who has been convicted of money laundering. JPMorgan has denied any wrongdoing.
Dutch prosecutors are also preparing criminal charges against Shell. Despite the international cases, only Nigerian officials can rescind the rights to the block. Oil minister, Ibe Kachikwu has said the case should not hinder development of the field. His office did not immediately reply to a further request for comment. The anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is pursuing a criminal case against other former officials in relation to OPL 245. Eni and Shell bought the offshore field for about $1.3 billion in a deal that spawned one of the largest corruption scandals in corporate Nigerian history. It is alleged that about $1.1 billion of the total was siphoned to agents and middlemen.
President Buhari was re-elected on the same anti-corruption message that helped him defeat Jonathan in 2015. But he had treaded carefully as opinions within the cabinet differ over how to handle the OPL 245 saga. Some close aides to the president argue that directly accusing your predecessor of corruption would set a precedence that could be used against Buhari himself when he leaves office. So far, Buhari himself has exercised restrain in not commenting on the issue even as courts in Europe continue to hear cases and hand down convictions to some of the actors.
In September last year, an Italian judge said the oil majors -Shell and Eni were fully aware their 2011 purchase of OPL 245 would result in corrupt payments to Nigerian politicians and officials. The Milan judge made the comment in her written reasons for the conviction of Emeka Obi and Italian Gianluca Di Nardo, both middlemen in the OPL 245 deal, for corruption. Obi and Di Nardo were tried separately from Eni and Shell, and jailed for four years each.
Huhuonline.com has learned that the lawyers for the Nigerian government in the London case were confident to state publicly that Jonathan and Madueke collected bribes after their names were found in materials in a suitcase seized from Obi nearly three years ago by Swiss authorities. The confiscated material including documents, an external hard drive, British and African passports, and USB keys, have potential pertinence in the criminal investigation and are said to contain the identities of the Nigerian recipients of the $1.1billion in corrupt payments by Shell and ENI over the purchase of OPL 245 from Malabu Oil owned by Etete.
A Geneva prosecutor was reviewing the materials to decide what could be shared with Italian, UK and Dutch authorities, where trials are ongoing in the monumental bribery scandal. But Emeka Obi appealed to Switzerland’s top court, the Federal Tribunal, to block unsealing of the documents saying it violated Swiss law. Obi’s Geneva lawyers Paul Gully-Hart and Charles Goumaz had argued that the suitcase contained privileged information that cannot be shared in international judicial assistance in criminal matters under Swiss secrecy laws. However, the Lausanne court in a ruling rejected Obi’s argument, saying the documents could be unsealed without violating Swiss law.
The Geneva prosecutor now has access to all the material and because of the potential pertinence in the London case, some of the material, containing the names of Nigerian politicians and middlemen who received kickbacks from the Malabu oil deal, including Jonathan and Madueke, has been handed over to Nigerian government lawyers in London.
Obi brought the Swiss case to keep the contents of the bag seized in Geneva in April 2016 from being shared with foreign authorities. Its confiscation led the Geneva prosecutor to open a criminal case for suspected corruption of foreign officials and money-laundering. Days later Italian authorities requested judicial assistance from Swiss authorities, arguing that the suitcase and its contents have relevance to the case in Milan where proceedings targeted 13 defendants and Eni and Shell accused of corruption linked to acquiring OPL 245 prospecting rights. Eni has denied any wrongdoing. Shell continues to argue that neither Obi nor Di Nardo had worked for Shell, and that there was no basis to convict Shell or any of its former staff of alleged offences related to the deal.
