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French Authorities Send Ibori’s Mistress to London for Trial

December 30, 2008
Image removed. Despite spirited efforts by Attorney General Michael Aondoakaa to persuade French authorities against sending Mrs. Udoamaka Okoronkwo, a mistress of former James Ibori, to London to face money laundering charges, the woman has been extradited to England.

 

Aondoakaa had made legal and diplomatic representations to France in a bid to stave off Okoronkwo’s extradition, but the woman, who was arrested in France on Friday, October 31 2008, is now to face justice in England.
The accused woman, described by one source as “the most flamboyant among Ibori’s harem,” is regarded as a major accomplice in Ibori’s extensive money laundering operations.

SaharaReporters had reported that Okoronkwo (nee Onuigbo) was picked up at Charles de Gaulle airport on a European arrest warrant. She had been in the US and was arrested as she boarded Air France en route back to Nigeria.

On the heels of her arrest, Ibori's lawyers told a Federal High Court in Kaduna where she was standing trial alongside Ibori that she could not be present in court due to her arrest in France. The lawyers told the judge that they had written to Attorney General Aondoakaa to intervene on her behalf. SaharaReporters learnt that the AGF tried in vain to stop Okoronkwo’s extradition to the UK. One UK-based attorney described her extradition as “a serious legal setback for Ibori.”

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1. CLICK HERE>>> AGF Michael Aondoakaa's 3rd Letter on Behalf Ibori to the UK

2. Southwark Crown Court Judgement on Ibori's Women -CLICK HERE>>>


French police who arrested Okoronkwo told SaharaReporters that she was “highly abusive, unruly, and refused to cooperate with interrogators after her arrest at the airport.” No details of her detention in London are currently available to Saharareporters as at the time of going to press.

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In a related development, a UK Court of Appeal hearing an appeal by the Crown Prosecution Service against the decision of the Southwark Crown Court to exclude some of the evidence provided to the CPS by the EFCC took an intriguing turn today. The Southwark Crown Court had ruled that the CPS could not use some of the EFCC-supplied evidence in the trial of Ibori's wife, Mrs. Theresa Ibori, his sister, Mrs. Christine Ibori-Ibie, and his former personal assistant, Ms Adebimpe Pogoson. The accused are charged with assisting Ibori in the laundering of millions of pounds stolen from the people of Delta State.

In court today, the Lord Justices of Appeal refused to grant the CPS leave to challenge the decision of the Crown Court to exclude the EFCC evidence in the trial of Theresa Ibori's wife on the ground that she was not named in the request for Mutual Legal Assistance. Meanwhile the CPS insists that they have sufficient evidence to start Mrs. Ibori’s prosecution in January 2009. The appellate justices decided that the appeal against the exclusion of part of the EFCC evidence in the trial of Mrs. Christine Ibori-Ibie and Ms Adebimpe Pogoson (also due to start in January 2009) would require a full hearing in the week commencing on 15 December 2008. This is to enable the British Home Secretary, Ms Jacqui Smith, to make representations before the Court of Appeal on the official position of the United Kingdom government on the use of the evidence and the interpretation of the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty.

Since the treaty, and the communication between the Home Secretary and the Nigerian Attorney-General (who are the designated authorities for both countries under the treaty) over the EFCC evidence is at the heart of the appeal, the justices decided that the Home Secretary should formally present the position of the British government in the appeal. Should the Home Secretary be unable to do this, the justices indicated that they would ask the UK Attorney General to make the case for the British government, as the country's Chief Law Officer.

Two legal analysts and one anti-corruption campaigner in the UK told SaharaReporters that the official intervention of the British government was highly significant. “All of this maneuver has arisen from Mr. Aondoakaa's desperate attempts to protect Mr. Ibori and his accomplices from British justice,” said one of the analysts.

The other analyst remarked that the involvement of the British government would not only raise the profile of the case but is expected to ramp up pressure on both the British and Nigerian governments to extradite Mr. Ibori to face trial in the United Kingdom where his ill-gotten assets worth more than $35 million are still frozen by a restraint order obtained by the CPS last year.

An initial request by the Home Secretary to Mr. Aondoakaa to extradite Mr Ibori last year was refused by Mr. Aondoakaa.

Today's report by Human Rights Watch linking the persecution of the former EFCC Chairman Nuhu Ribadu by the Yar'adua government to the EFCC prosecution of Mr. Ibori has already increased the profile of the case. In a press release that has been widely reported by the major global news agencies including Reuters and the BCC, the HRW noted: “In December 2007, the EFCC sent shock waves through the political establishment by arresting the powerful former Delta State governor James Ibori and charging him with 103 counts of corruption, including an alleged attempt to bribe Ribadu with US$15 million in cash to drop the case against him. The EFCC's decision to prosecute Ibori was notable because the former governor was widely seen as politically untouchable. He is among the wealthiest politicians in Nigeria and is known to be a close associate of Yar'Adua. Two weeks later, the inspector general of police ordered Ribadu to resign and attend a 10-month police-training course... Judicial personnel and other political observers interviewed by Human Rights Watch said certain actions by the attorney general have undermined anti-corruption efforts both in Nigeria and in the United Kingdom, including intervening on behalf of Ibori in a British court case involving Ibori's alleged embezzlement and money laundering of US$35 million of Delta State funds.”

Last week, Mr. Aondoakaa went into ecstatic celebration of the Southwark Crown Court’s decision to exclude parts of the evidence the EFCC had supplied to British prosecutors trying Ibori’s accomplices. “It’s very telling that Nigeria’s chief law officer has put himself in the role of chief cheerleader for one of the country’s biggest crooks,” one UK lawyer told us.

A legal analyst told Saharareporters that Mr. Aondoakaa possibly misled the Southwark Crown Court to grant limited reprieve to Mr. Ibori's accomplices. “If so, this would be the second time Mr. Aondoakaa's intervention on behalf of Ibori has misled the UK lower court to grant reprieve to the former governor.”

In a letter to the British Home Secretary dated September 15 2008, Aondoakaa objected to the use of the EFCC evidence. The Nigerian attorney general alleged that it was a strict requirement under Nigerian law that any information provided by the EFCC to a foreign authority under a Mutual Legal Assistance request must be authenticated by the Attorney General before such information could be used in any judicial proceedings especially in a foreign jurisdiction. The Southwark Crown Court relied on this statement, according it what the judge called “some measure of authority” in arriving at its decision that the conditions under the treaty were not satisfied in relation to part of the EFCC evidence.

But section 6(k) of The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (Establishment) Act 2004 provides that the EFCC “shall be responsible for dealing with matters connected with the extradition, deportation and mutual legal or other assistance between Nigeria and any other country involving Economic and Financial Crimes.” Also, Article 3(1) of the treaty provides that the treaty “shall not prevent or restrict any assistance or procedure available ...under the laws of the Contracting Parties.”

One of our UK legal analysts remarked that the Southwark Crown Court, “apparently misled by Mr. Aondoakaa's false statement, did not appear to have given any consideration to the provision of Article 3(1) of the treaty when it held that the treaty was breached.”

Meanwhile, SaharaReporters has learnt that the EFCC plans to change the prosecuting attorney handling Ibori's case in Kaduna, Mrs. Farida Waziri has asked Mr. Rotimi Jacobs, the lawyer originally handling the case to prepare for a more "senior" attorney to lead the case, it is expected that a lawyer from Niger state, Ishiaku Ibrahim, SAN with close links Ibori will take over the case. our sources revealed that the EFCC leadership has massively engaged People's Democratic Party operatives and lawyers with Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) titles to take over its cases.

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