The Southwark Crown court trying James Ibori’s wife, Theresa Nkoyo Ibori; UK-based lawyer, Bhadresh Gohil; Ibori’s sister, Chris Ibie-Ibori; and two other associates—Bimpe Pogoson and Mrs. Udoamaka Okoronkwo, Nee Onuigbo—has given the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) until the 26th of this month to convince Nigeria’s Attorney General, Michael Aondoakaa, to sign off on the 11 boxes of evidence sent to him by the CPS. They were delivered to the office of the AGF in January through the British High Commission in Abuja.
But to avoid treating the request, Aondoakaa went on “official leave” for close to three weeks, in what turned out to be a whirlwind money laundering trip across Europe, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Asia, as Saharareporters had already revealed.
Since returning from his “leave,” Aondoakaa has used the excuse of writing the White Paper on the Electoral Reform Committee as a cover but officials of the ministry knowledgeable about the requests, titled “LR1 and LR2,” told Saharareporters that Aondoakaa does not plan to touch the request or respond to the CPS in any fashion.
In a further attempt to avoid dealing with the request, the EFCC also reportedly ignored a simple request from the Metropolitan Police in London last week to do a background check of a bailor to Mrs. Udoamaka Okronkwo, known as Patrick Denyefa Ndiomu. EFCC officials decided not to respond to the inquiry because they said it would draw the agency out to explain why it didn’t want to help with the letter of requests to validate evidence earlier collected against Ibori’s associates from the EFCC while Nuhu Ribadu was chairman.
Aondoakaa is working directly with James Ibori to frustrate his trial altogether in Nigeria. Since the Court of Appeal sitting in Kaduna gave a controversial order to the EFCC to re-arraign Ibori in a high court of local jurisdiction close to the area his crimes of money laundering and abuse of office was committed, for instance, the EFCC and the AGF have so far refused to re-arraign him for looting the treasury of Delta State throughout the eight years he was governor. The EFCC did not also appeal the ruling of the Court of Appeal even though the Chair of the agency, Mrs. Farida Waziri, promised the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) that she would do so.
However, new evidence has surfaced on how James Ibori first bribed Aondoakaa with N280 million in 2007, soon after he was appointed Attorney General by Yar’Adua, to begin work against the trial of Ibori in the UK. It was about the same time Aondoakaa also received two cars from Orji Uzor Kalu, the former governor of Abia State, to stop his trial.
Upon receipt of the bribe monies and car gifts, Aondoakaa began waging war against the prosecutorial powers of the EFCC, first threatening to take over all prosecutions of cases against former governors who were on trial, and later assigning lawyers to engage in physical altercation with EFCC lawyers in the open court.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content1'); });
Aondoakaa, as Saharareporters later revealed, also wrote a letter dated August 7th 2007 in which he tactically exonerated Ibori from money laundering crimes in Nigeria. That letter was used by Ibori’s lawyers to unfreeze his UK assets, but a higher court re-froze the assets as the CPS and Proceeds of Crimes Unit (POCU) pursued a vigorous appeal against the order of the lower court.
New evidence shows that a lawyer, Augustine Oyarekhua Alegeh, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria who was part of Ibori’s legal team, handled the bribe monetary package from Ibori to Aondoakaa. But Alegeh was also very close to Aondoakaa, having graduated from the Nigerian Law School in Victoria Island same year as Aondoakaa in 1986. Sources told Saharareporters that they were friends from law school. Alegeh is currently the lawyer handling the coordination of Ibori’s legal matters—an activity that includes the bribery of judges and payments of sundry “legal fees”.
Saharareporters saw text messages flying between James Ibori’s phone number 08022243480 and Alegeh’s telephone number 0803-300-0770 detailing the transactions that led to the delivery of the bribe money to Aondoakaa between June and July 2007. The bribe was prepared at Protea Hotel in Abuja. When Aondoaka received the bribe, Alegeh sent a text message to Ibori proclaiming: “the Money is home.”
Aondoakaa has grown more brazen in interfering with EFCC cases whenever he receives bribes from litigants, as inthe case of Ondo State –born businessman where Aondoakaa stopped his trial for fraud before a Lagos High court last year. In the case of the Vaswani Brothers, Aondoakaa also stopped Police investigations into cases of import waiver scam raised against the controversial businessmen. Recently he also wrote to stop the case against a lawyer Moses Odirri.
The EFCC in February 2009 claimed that the lawyer had between March 15, 2006 and April 4, 2006 accepted a cash payment of N60m from one Lawal Yaro under the false pretence of rendering professional services to secure bail for the former Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen Ishaya Bamaiyi (rtd).
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('comments'); });
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content2'); });