James Ibori's London Money Laundering Case: Crown Court sends Ibori's Lawyer and Wife to Trial

February 11, 2009

Theresa Nkoyo Ibori and Bhadresh Gohil–James Ibori's wife and United Kingdom lawyer—both suffered a huge legal blow in London today as Judge Rivlin of the Southwark Crown Court ruled that money-laundering trials could commence against them. On a day on which the convictions of James Ibori and Theresa for thefts in London one decade before he became Delta State governor were used in argument, th

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The dismissed charge relates to the fact that when Mr. Gohil assisted Theresa Ibori to open a bank account with American Intercapital Depository & Trust (AIDT) in Colorado, USA, he supplied a false reference letter to the bank confirming he had known her for 4 years and recommending her as a suitable customer. This letter was clearly false, but the bank is in liquidation and the Metropolitan Police have been unable to obtain a statement from it to support the fact that the reference letter sent by Mr. Gohil was used for an accounting purpose. The Judge hinted that this count would be quashed due to this fact, but the evidence can still be used to support other counts.

At previous hearing starting from February 9 2009, Theresa's Ibori's lawyer, Andrew Mitchel, tried to persuade the court that James Ibori has always been a wealthy man with diverse business interests prior to becoming governor of Delta State in 1999. According to his account, there is no evidence that funds and properties at his and those of his wife, Theresa's disposal, were the proceeds of crime. But this argument only preceded what became a juicy story of carefully-executed money-laundering deals between Ibori, his wife and his UK-based lawyer, Bhadresh Gohil.(
Prosecution Counsel, Sasha Waas, responding for the Crown, went through bank account opening applications for James Ibori and Theresa to show that there could be nothing but an "irresistible inference" that the funds being sent to the United Kingdom were the proceeds of Mr. Ibori's criminal conduct.

The Crown prosecution needed to prove its case against Ibori's lawyer and wife to meet the standard set by the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division (Lord Justice Latham, Mr Justice Clarke and Mr Justice MacDuff) so held on May 27, 2007. It thus needed to:
Show that the funds derived from conduct of a specific kind or kinds and that conduct of that kind or those kinds were unlawful, or provide evidence of the circumstances in which the property was handled, to be such as to lead to the irresistible inference that it could only be derived from crime.
(Sasha Waas stressed that the Crown did not, nor had ever accepted, that Ibori was 'wealthy' prior to becoming a Governor, as stated by Mitchell. In a dramatic revelation, The Crown prosecution counsel drew attention to the two computer hard drives which were found hidden behind Bhadresh Gohil's fireplace in his office on the day of his arrest and subsequent search. According to Waas, these hard drives contained lots of incriminating information relating to Mr. Ibori and most of his associates involved in the case. The Crown went further to say that Mr. Gohil lied to the Police when he was questioned about what was on the hard drives. While he had initially affirmed that they were his 'personal papers,' on further questioning, he said, “It's my history, my history”.

Following Ms. Wass’ statement, Kennedy Talbot, lawyer to Mr. Gohil, presented his response to what the Crown had to say regarding his client. Of the hard drives, he said there were two hard drives but the Police were clearly questioning him only about one of them, and that he had not lied. Obviously the hard drives had been forensically examined and found to contain due diligence documents which had been created on a computer and there is clearly a discrepancy about the date they appear to have been written. The Prosecution witness said in essence Gohil had used his computer to create due diligence documents on behalf of Theresa and James Ibori as he simply couldn't provide any and this was done months after he should have done it as he wasn't able to obtain what he needed to satisfy the authorities.

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Interestingly, he freely supplied the documents to the Metropolitan Police to give the impression he had been acting legally and correctly on behalf of his clients.( (The judge then asked a question regarding the Barclays MER Engineering bank accounts and that was: "Was James Ibori the governor when funds were credited to the account from Chevron, Shell and others?” The answer was of course 'yes', which then knocks off substantial arguments of Theresa's lawyers that James Ibori was a wealthy man before he became governor.( (The Crown Prosecution also went on to say that Ibori's wife, Theresa Nkoyo, was an intricate part of the purchase of 7 Westover Hill, London and that she was heavily involved with Mr. Gohil throughout the process of the purchase of the property for £2.2 million. It further made the point that the registration of the property through an offshore base - Gibraltar registered company- Haleway Properties Ltd. amounts to concealing criminal property. But Theresa Ibori's lawyer, Mitchell, stated that the reason high profile individuals do that is only because they want to keep their identity off Land Registry searches for "security reasons."((It was also shown that Theresa was heavily involved with the purchase of the Great Ground property in Dorset (Owned by Teleton Quays - a British Virgin Islands registered company). Teleton Quays was set up and incorporated by Mr. Gohil who showed himself as a Director on company documents. A £311,000 cheque was brought into Arlingtons Sharmas solicitors by Ibori's mistress Udoamaka Okoronkwo drawn on her HSBC account for the purchase of this house. With reference to this, the prosecution argued that Gohil breached Law Society guidelines as Mrs. Okoronkwo was an unknown third party and Mr. Gohil had never met her and did not do due diligence at all surrounding her or the provenance of the funds.

Also at this point, Talbot stated that Mrs. Okoronkwo was employed as an agent acting on behalf of Theresa and Mr. Gohil, and that a letter from the Ibori's so stated. Talbot further stated that the funds came from a UK bank, which meant everything was in order. But the Crown Prosecution counsel pointed out that that was a lie. She underlined that the Metropolitan Police and the Crown prosecution Service never accepted that Mrs. Okoronkwo was an agent, stating that she only acted as the Ibori's banker in the UK. She said, just because the funds come from a reputable bank doesn't mean they are not stolen, she said, as UK banking laws mean that a Suspicious Transaction Report (STR) may have been filed.( (The Crown also observed that Mr. Ibori bought a London flat in March 1999 for £315,000 and had to obtain a £150,000 mortgage loan, which was hardly the act of a wealthy person. But in a short window of time, precisely in 2000, the mortgage was paid off with two credits from Nigeria which the Crown says are corrupt monies, showing he was creaming off Delta State as soon as he became the governor.( (The Crown also recalled that in the 1980's James Ibori and then Theresa Nkoyo Nakanda had to claim income support from the UK government to live, and had to resort to petty criminality to survive. That led to two criminal convictions in the early 1990's.

But Mitchell insisted that Mr. Ibori had a whole host of companies and had gone from 'rags to riches', and that there is nothing wrong in that. He argued that just because Ibori had several houses purchased in different company names registered off shore was not wrong, noting that Tony Blair had done just that in the past. He also stated that the convictions against James Ibori and Theresa Ibori were only “petty” and should be ignored, as they happened a decade before Ibori became governor!

Saharareporters also learned today at the hearing that James Ibori and his wife, Theresa Nkoyo stated in their Barclays Bank account opening forms that their income as Nigerian government officials was £360,000 per annum for James Ibori and £30,000 for Theresa Nkoyo. Even if the court were to accept this argument, it still would not account for all of the vast assets in the UK so far traced to Ibori and his associates.( (There were further disclosures of monies for the lifestyle of the Iboris (Amex cards, Chauffeur service bills, school fees for his children in high-end British schools, etc) that were being paid for by Mr. Gohil from the Solicitors-client account he maintained for the Ibori's. But when Mr. Gohil realized that the Metropolitan Police were investigating him he wrote to the Iboris explaining he could no longer take their instructions relating to utility bills and school fees and could no longer act as a bank.

Ibori’s lawyer, Mitchel did not deny it, but tried to take advantage of the argument by saying that it was exactly any decent law firm would be expected to do. But the Crown Counsel shot back with the explanation that Mr. Gohil then immediately went ahead to open the bank account at AIDT in Denver, CO for Theresa Ibori. It was for that he provided a false reference for the account to be activated. From Nigeria, the Crown stated, $500,000 was transferred into the account and Mr.Gohil supplied AIDT with invoices to pay exactly the same bills as he had been doing from his client account before he sent the advisory when he learned he was being investigated in England. When AIDT wanted due diligence documents, Mr. Gohil asked the bank to close the account as Theresa was getting stressed out over the requests. He simply couldn't provide the due diligence that AIDT demanded.

(Saharareporters has also learnt that the other big issue is the fact that lots of monies were transferred into Mr. Gohil controlled Arlingtons Sharmas solicitors client account for James Ibori's's purchase of the Jet Aircraft that originated from Ken Oil & Gas, an entity previously undisclosed as Ibori's company. ( (Judge Rivlin’s blockbuster ruling today is barely surprising, giving the mass of information the prosecution has accumulated. But this trial is still missing out James Ibori himself. Also still missing are a Zambian named Edward Shamutee, as well as Nocggie Meggison, the managing director of Ibori's failing airline, Wings Aviation Limited.

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