This comes less than 24 hours after the anti-graft agency arraigned Shasore over allegations of money laundering.
A former Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice in Lagos State, Mr Olasupo Shasore, who allegedly obtained $2 million from Process & Industrial Development Ltd, a British Virgin Island engineering firm, has again been arraigned by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
This comes less than 24 hours after the anti-graft agency arraigned Shasore over allegations of money laundering.
He was on Thursday arraigned on four counts before Chukwujekwu Aneke, a judge of a Federal High Court in Lagos.
On Friday, he was arraigned on two counts before a Special Offences Court in Ikeja.
The former Attorney General was alleged to have committed money laundering to the tune of $100,000 without going through a financial institution.
He, however, pleaded not guilty to the charge which contradicts Section 9(1)(a)(b) of the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act, 2020.
Following his plea of not guilty, EFCC counsel, Bala Sanga, requested for a trial date to prove the allegation against him.
Meanwhile, Shasore’s counsel, Yemi Candide-Johnson (SAN) applied for his bail on liberal terms or on self-recognizance, arguing that his client, isn’t a flight risk and that the alleged offences are bailable.
In her ruling, Justice Dada granted him bail and released him to his counsel with a promise to undertake to present him on the next adjourned date.
The matter was subsequently adjourned till December 6, for the commencement of trial.
In January, EFCC interrogated Mr Shasore over his involvement in the Process & Industrial Development (P&ID) $9.6 billion judgement saga.
The senior lawyer, who was appointed as Nigeria’s legal representative in the P&ID case in 2012, was accused of compromising the country’s defence at a British arbitration tribunal, contributing to the humongous award issued against Nigeria by the panel.
P&ID Ltd had won a $9.6 billion arbitration against the Nigerian Government over a 2010 gas supply deal that went sour.
The court in London had ordered Nigeria to forfeit assets totalling $9.6 billion as compensation for the engineering firm if the country was unable to prove its case.
Documents obtained by SaharaReporters showed that following an investigation by the EFCC, Shasore was found to have been paid $2 million for his involvement in the first and second stages of the arbitration.
To achieve this target, he allegedly concealed his involvement in the case from his own firm, Ajumogobia & Okeke, but conducted the proceedings covertly through a separate firm, Twenty Marina, which had no background in litigation and was used to provide secretarial services.
Shasore, it was discovered, made payments of $100,000 each to Mrs Olufolakemi Adelore and Mr Ikechukwu Oguine, who were senior lawyers for the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (now Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited) at the time.
The payments were said to have been made to purchase the silence of Adelore and Oguine in relation to Shasore’s conduct of the arbitration.
A source privy to how the whole drama panned out, told SaharaReporters that Shasore’s conduct in the first two stages of the arbitration was totally unacceptable.
“Based on these payments, Mr Shasore was clearly dishonest and corruptible.
“Following the election of President Muhammadu Buhari into the office and the transfer of the conduct of the arbitration to the Ministry of Justice for the liability phase, Shasore has refused to meet with the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, and complained that it was unacceptable and unconscionable to liaise with the AGF’s office on the matter as he had always liaised with the Ministry of Petroleum Resources since the commencement of the proceedings.
“He chose not to seek any disclosure, to accept all material aspects of Mr Quinn’s witness evidence and did not seek to cross-examine anyone at P&ID on the key issue in the case: whether P&ID could and would have performed the GSPA.
“In light of the indicators of fraud listed above, the most likely explanation for this is that Mr Shasore had entered into a dishonest arrangement with P&ID not to challenge its evidence or seek any disclosure with the inevitable result that Nigeria lost the case.”
In August 2019, the UK court declared that P&ID could take over assets from Nigeria totalling $9.6 billion for the country’s breach of the deal between them.