Yesterday’s decision by the Southwark Crown Court lifting the restraining order against former Governor James Ibori's worldwide assets has begun to generate political heat and controversy likely to make Ibori’s victory short-lived.
Saharareporters has learnt that the embarrassing revelation of the role played by Attorney General Michael Aondoakaa in Ibori’s triumph has earned a query for the nation’s chief law officer.
Aondoakaa had on August 7, 2007 issued a letter to Ibori’s lawyers asserting that Ibori was not a target of money laundering investigations in Nigeria. That letter was the decisive factor in the order unfreezing Ibori’s assets.
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On learning that the attorney general helped sabotage the trial in London, Umar Yar’adua summoned Aondoakaa to his office to explain his role. Presidency sources said that the AG denied ever issuing such a letter.
Saharareporters however found out that the AG was only playing coy. Our sources at the Metropolitan Police in London disclosed that the Director of Fraud Prosecution Service, David Kirk, had written to the Attorney General on the Ibori matter on August 30, 2007. The letter apprised the attorney general of the Mets’ findings in a two-year investigation code-named 'Operation Tureen.' The Metropolitan Police sought certain clarifications from the Attorney General on Ibori as well as three other accomplices, namely Udo Amaka Okoronkwo, Christine Ibie Ibori and Adebimpe Pogoson.
Shortly after, the Metropolitan Police sought and got an appointment to meet with the AGF in Abuja. The Mets sent two detectives - Trevor Shepherd and Garry Waltern from the Economic and Specialist Crime Directorate of the Metropolitan Police- to Abuja, but the Attorney General refused to meet with them.
On September 20, 2007, the British High Commission sent another delegation led by an Undersecretary at the British Embassy that took the Met's letter to the Attorney General. Rather than act on the letter, the AGF sat on it under the pretext that he was going to the UN General Assembly. On September 28, 2007, he claimed he had dispatched a letter to the EFCC asking them to furnish his office with James Ibori's dossier—which was the precise information requested by the Metropolitan Police.
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However, Saharareporters has learnt that the AGF’s letter to the EFCC has not even been sent to the EFCC as that today (Tuesday October 2, 2007), a day after the Southwark Crown Court lifted the order freezing Ibori’s assets.
Some of the information contained in the letter from the London police include details of how James Ibori paid for the Bombardier Aircraft in Canada and his acquisition of a state-of-the-art automobile known as Maybach which he was shipping to Nigeria through South Africa.
The Attorney General never responded officially to the request from the London Metropolitan Police. While the British High Commission delivered the Mets’ letter on Sept 20, Aondoakaa claims to have written a letter to the EFCC dated Sept 28, but which was never sent to the anti-corruption agency. He has denied writing a letter to Ibori’s lawyers, leaving the impression that the delay in responding to the inquiry from the Mets owed to a failure by the EFCC to respond to him.
In another intriguing development, whilst the Metropolitan Police were pressing hard for the Nigerian authorities to supply them fresh information on Ibori’s money transfers involving several banks and persons in Nigeria, the former governor was in New York holding secret meetings with Yar'adua at the latter’s hotel in New York. Ibori even had a United Nations Pass issued to him that identified him as a member of Yar'adua's delegation. Our checks at Yar'adua's hotel in New York revealed that Ibori met with Yar'adua twice during his trip to the UN, once on Sunday night shortly after the arrival of Yar'adua to the UN General Assembly and also on Tuesday before he went into another marathon meeting with the current governor of Delta State, Emmanuel Uduaghan. Governor Bukola Saraki of Kwara State was also in attendance at both meetings.
Saharareporters sources reveal that Bukola Saraki was the one who prevailed on officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to issue Ibori with a UN Pass. Presidency officials contend that Yar'adua was not aware of the fact that Ibori procured a pass as a member of his delegation. Even so, the pass was part of the evidence provided by Ibori’s lawyers to the Southwark Crown Court to make the case that he was not in trouble with Nigerian authorities. That strengthened his lawyers’ case and persuaded the judge to lift the assets freezing order on Monday, October 1st 2007.
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