New US court filing shows Abacha loot case traps Nigeria in deal done by Atiku Bugudu
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
A new amicus brief filed by human rights fighter Emmanuel Ogebe in a court in the United States in the money laundering case against former Kebbi Governor now Budget and Economic Planning Minister Atiku Bagudu shows how CBN paid some banks $6.7 billion and borrowed back $7 billion in a repeat of Bugudu’s Abacha loot fraud.
Bagudu has already forfeited $458,000,000 to the US over money laundering – over a thousand times more than $460,000 forfeited for drug trafficking – but Ogebe tells the court the new case is a bigger bolder looting.
The brief says
- In the 1990s, Bagudu used Nigeria’s money to buy a foreign debt that Nigeria owed and resold it more expensively to Nigeria making a 100 per cent profit of over a quarter of a billion dollars!
- The past Muhammadu Buhari administration perpetrated Abacha’s Fraud Scheme One and the current Bola Tinubu administration is perpetrating Abacha’s Fraud Scheme Two which is pertinent for the court to note.
- However, the new debt borrow back scam is far worse than Bagudu’s prior debt buy back. Nigeria’s expected gas revenue to repay the loan is less than a third of the loan and will take at least a dozen years to pay off – holding the country captive long after the tenure of this administration in an impossible debt trap.
- This new DBB 2.0 is an unsustainable loan that will entrap Nigeria for decades and will only profit the banks and officials getting kickbacks from this egregious and ingenious fleecing of the country.
- Bagudu, bagman laundering Abacha’s multibillion dollar loot, broke the laws of Switzerland, United States, United Kingdom, Nigeria, France, Isle of Jersey, among others.
- “That Nigeria’s Tinubu appointed a fellow US money laundering forfeiter as Budget Minister, having forfeited at least 1000 times more money than him in the US alone – $458,000,000 to $460,000 – one could reasonably infer that this is to facilitate a grander scale national larceny from within government than he did from outside government decades ago.”
Published below is a copy of the full amicus brief Ogebe sent to TheNiche:
Ongoing $200m Bagudu money laundering case in US
Below is the latest amicus brief recently filed in the ongoing $200 million Atiku Bagudu money laundering case in Washington, revealing to the court the re-enactment of the same Abacha era looting fraud by new pretenses under his money launderer now Tinubu’s Budget Minister.
Media are reminded that court documents are generally privileged and thus protected from defamation claims in most jurisdictions.
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff,
VS. Civil Action No. 13-1832 (JDB)
ALL ASSETS HELD IN ACCOUNT NUMBER
80020796, IN THE NAME OF
DORAVILLE PROPERTIES CORPORATION,
AT DEUTSCHE BANK INTERNATIONAL,
LIMITED IN JERSEY, CHANNEL ISLANDS,
AND ALL INTEREST, BENEFITS, OR ASSETS
TRACEABLE THERETO, et al.,
Defendants.
THIRD SUPPLEMENTARY SUBMISSION TO AMICUS BRIEF
Now comes Amicus/Movant with a further supplementary brief (hereinafter known as the Third Supplementary Addendum) pin addition to the initial Amicus brief motion dated January 20, 2023 in order to furnish the court with vital information which is crucial to the proceedings.
Since the matters addressed herein, relate specifically to emergent events, findings and developments referenced in the main Amicus Brief and the First and Second Supplementary Addenda, Amicus respectfully seeks to submit this presents as a further addendum without requiring leave of court, other than that originally prayed the court in the motion aforementioned.
Now therefore, Movant Amicus adds further as follows:
1. CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA REPRISES INFAMOUS BAGUDU “DEBT BUY BACK“ SCAM IN NEW “DEBT BORROW BACK” SCHEME
1.1 In the prior addendum, Amicus reviewed the immediate past Nigerian administration, comparing the forex looting under Gen. [Sani] Abacha’s CBN with the looting under Gen. [Muhammadu] Buhari’s CBN which were essentially a reenactment of Fraud Scheme One involving these defendant assets. (Dkt 400 Point #3)
Months into Mr [Bola] Tinubu’s administration’s tenure, disturbing signs are emerging of a strikingly similar pattern of misconduct also reenacting Fraud Scheme Two.
1.2 Per media reports, “The CBN, on Thursday, reportedly commenced the payment of outstanding FX commitments with CitiBank, Stanbic IBTC and Standard Chartered Bank, the biggest players in FX business, said to have been credited. The overdue forward contracts were estimated at $6.7 billion.
Sources privy to the new policy direction of the new CBN management told The Guardian that the payment marked a series of “deliberate action plans” that would shore up the value of naira in the coming months.” (Naira holds firm, trades below N1000/$ at parallel market By Geoff Iyatse and Helen Oji, The Guardian 06 November 2023)
1.3 However, a different report states, “Well, the Tinubu administration has decided to securitize about $7 billion of the country’s dividends for five years from the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG)…
It means that the dividend payments, which will accrue to Nigeria from its 49% equity in NLNG over five years, would be sourced and handed to the country by a consortium of banks led by Standard Chartered. The bank expects to be paid a fee for the transaction, and the government will also cover the interest payments for the entire period.
It’s a strange request because, according to the Budget Office, the FG is only due $2.2 Billion over the next 4 years from its investment in the NLNG. How did they arrive at $7 billion?
In essence, while the government is telling the public that its securitization is for 5 years, unless a miracle happens in gas production, we are looking at a situation where a government is borrowing future revenue for up to 12 years.
And that is without accounting for the interest on this loan.” – (Dollars And Dilemmas: Tinubu’s Fiscal Chess* by Tosin Adeoti.)
So with the right hand, the CBN is paying SCB et al $6.7 Billion and with the left hand borrowing $7 Billion back from SCB and co whilst paying transaction fees and interests for at least a dozen years!
1.4 In a manner brazenly similar to the Debt-buyback fraud scheme through which Atiku Bagudu helped Gen.Abacha loot the CBN of the defendant assets in this litigation, curiously, the same Bagudu, now Nigeria’s new Budget Minister despite his money laundering asset forfeiture cases, superintends a new bigger, bolder and better looting scheme.
1.5 As this court noted about the precursor looting scheme:
“The second scheme, referred to as the “Debt Buy-Back Fraud,” began in 1996, when Bagudu and others arranged for the Nigerian government, with General Abacha’s approval, to repurchase its own debt from Mecosta—a company owned by Bagudu and Mohammed Abacha—at a price significantly higher than what Nigeria would have paid on the open market. Id. 36–44…
Bagudu approached General Abacha’s other son Ibrahim Abacha and Nigerian Finance Minister Anthony Ani, who assured Bagudu that if Mecosta bought the debt, Nigeria would buy it from Mecosta. Id. 40.…
Bagudu then “orchestrated a series of transactions through which Mecosta received money in escrow from Nigeria, used that money to purchase the debt from Parnar, and sold the debt back to Nigeria at a significant markup.” Id. 41.
…Bagudu arranged for TPE to sell approximately 1.6 billion [German Deutschemarks (“DM”)] of its Nigerian debt instruments to Parnar on or about September 30, 1996, for 350 million DM.
That same day, Parnar resold the same debt to Mecosta, raising the price to 486 million DM. Mecosta immediately marked up the price again and sold it back to Nigeria for 972 million DM, which the Nigerian government paid in two installments of 486 million DM…”
Mohammed Abacha and Bagudu, as the owners of Mecosta, yielded a profit of approximately 481 million DM or $282,506,664.” Id.
1.6 In summary, in the ‘90s, Bagudu used Nigeria’s money to buy a foreign debt that Nigeria owed and resold it more expensively to Nigeria making a 100% profit of over a quarter of a billion dollars!
Again in 2023, Nigeria’s $6.7 Billion is being given to a consortium of banks who will now lend $7 Billion back to Nigeria to create a domestic debt at interest over five years at least.
SUBMISSION: It is respectfully submitted that the past Buhari administration perpetrated Abacha’s Fraud Scheme One and the current Tinubu administration is perpetrating Abacha’s Fraud Scheme Two which is pertinent for the court to note.
2. BAGUDU’S NEW AND IMPROVED “DEBT BORROW BACK” SCHEME IS WORSE
2.1 However the new debt borrow back scam is far worse than Bagudu’s prior debt buy back. Nigeria’s expected gas revenue to repay the loan is less than 1/3 of the loan and will take at least a dozen years to payoff – holding the nation captive long after the tenure of this regime in an impossible debt trap.
2.2 Even worse, Punch newspaper reported that “Nigeria had no record for the sales of gas from November 2021 to March 2023.” (Seven-month zero earnings on crude oil sales worsen Nigeria’s forex crisis… Punch)
In dire straits such as these, the CBN is taking odd positions that will only impoverish the nation further with a debt bondage that poor citizens will be unable to repay.
This new DBB 2.0 is an unsustainable loan that will entrap Nigeria for decades and will only profit the banks and officials getting kickbacks from this egregious and ingenious fleecing of the country.
2.3 Unlike Bagudu’s DBB 1.0, DBB 2.0 is the grift that keeps on grifting. Rather than steal from Nigeria once and hide it abroad where courts like this one can intervene, Bagudu, in a master stroke devised a scam in plain sight, in domestic loans that will steal from the country officially for years on end – safe from the prying eyes and arms of this and other foreign courts unlike the Abacha loot!
It should be noted that while [Lagos] Governor, Mr Tinubu appointed his personal company as tax consultants and collectors to Lagos state, enslaving one of Africa’s largest economies as his piggy bank in perpetuity. Mr Tinubu is Lagos state and Lagos state is Mr Tinubu’s as various litigations in Nigeria have shown.
2.4 Aside whatever secret back-room sweetheart deals Nigeria’s banking sector is notorious for colluding with officials to foist on the nation for personal gain (see celebrated P&ID $12 Billion case thrown out by a UK Court last month) this shell game also uses the CBN to indirectly lend money to the FGN using the SCB bank consortium as a fiscal circumvention conduit. CBN has overextended its legal lending threshold to the Federal Government. So this transaction is both criminally corrupt and a crime!
SUBMISSION: It is respectfully submitted that the new debt borrow back is stealthier, arduous, odious and coldly calculated to evade scrutiny and sanction by international jurisdictions and pertinent for this court to note.
__________________________________________________________________
Related articles:
Bagudu not fit to be minister, US-based lawyer, Ogebe, petitions Senate
Ogebe proffers solutions to Abacha loot gridlock, diaspora remittance hindrances
US denial of religious persecution in Nigeria threatens world peace, Ogebe warns
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3. THE BAGUDU PROBLEM
This is all the more crucial as Gen. Abacha’s money laundering mastermind is Nigeria’s budget minister.
3.1 The US Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, the first black to hold that position and a Nigerian American, visited Nigeria to discuss illicit financial flows amongst others. Ironically, his counterpart in Nigeria, the Budget Minister, was the father of all illicit financial inflows.
Wally Adeyemo, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury of the United States of America, Top world economy, a Nigerian immigrant bagged a law degree from Yale University and served in President Obama’s White House.
Similarly, MP Kemi Badenoch, Secretary of Trade for the United Kingdom, Top world economy, daughter of Nigerian immigrants, bagged a law degree from the University of London.
However Atiku Bagudu, Minister for Budget and Planning of Nigeria, top African economy, bagman laundering dictator Abacha’s multibillion dollar loot, broke the laws of Switzerland, United States, United Kingdom, Nigeria, France, Isle of Jersey amongst others while the other two were mere children.
Nigeria expels human capital to excel in leadership abroad and elevates criminal elements to rulership at home. Youths toil as elders loot. And it is not just an optics problem.
3.2 As surmised in the prior supplementary Amicus brief, “That Nigeria’s Tinubu appointed a fellow US money laundering forfeiter as Budget Minister, having forfeited at least 1000 times more money than him in the US alone – $458,000,000 to $460,000 – one could reasonably infer that this is to facilitate a grander scale national larceny from within government than he did from outside government decades ago.” (Dkt 400 Point #3.5)
In the ‘90s, Bagudu used a quarter of a billion dollars belonging to Nigeria to buy a quarter billion dollars worth of Nigeria’s debt abroad. He then resold the quarter billion dollar debt back to Nigeria for half a billion dollars making a quarter of a billion dollar profit from nothing!
Today, he’s using $6.7 Billion belonging to Nigeria to fund a bank that will then lend $7 Billion back to Nigeria. Nigeria will thereafter use its future earnings, which his Budget office said is not up to the loan, for debt-servicing with interest over many years.
3.3 For a country that just escaped the $11 Billion verdict ($1 million daily interest in the UK P&ID case) Nigeria seems hell-bent on setting more traps for itself and future generations.
“Nigeria’s lawyer, Mark Howard, told the court that P&ID obtained its contract “by telling repeated lies and paying bribes to officials.”
Mr Howard alleged that the company financially induced top Nigerian government officials including those who chaired the government technical committee that reviewed the gas plant contract and several others.
He alleged also that lawyers in the Nigerian team during the arbitration proceedings were bribed.
On Monday, in a judgment delivered by Justice Robert Knowles, it was held that the process through which P&ID secured the contract was fraudulent.
“In the circumstances and for the reasons I have sought to describe and explain, Nigeria succeeds on its challenge under section 68. I have not accepted all of Nigeria’s allegations,” a copy of the judgement, seen by PREMIUM TIMES, reads.
“But the Awards were obtained by fraud and the Awards were and the way in which they were procured was contrary to public policy.
“What happened in this case is very serious indeed…”
3.4 With a track record of corruption, this automatically creates opportunities for individuals within the institutions involved to seek personal gain through kickbacks, bribes, or other illicit means in the process of executing the buyback.
In a case investigated by Amicus, Western bankers bribed Nigerian state officials to take loans. These loans ballooned from $6 Billion to over $20 Billion with interest and penalties making “oil-rich” Nigeria a highly indebted poor country. Nigeria eventually paid its Paris Club Creditors almost triple the original loan amounts stalling development for decades.
Between the twin US money laundering forfeiters now in government, Nigeria’s financial bondage and future mortgaged is assured.
SUBMISSION: It is respectfully submitted that the US money launderers now in government have craftily entrapped Nigeria into a predatory DBB2.0 loan as a domesticated continuing crime using their wealth of criminal experience and that this is pertinent for this court to note.
(To be continued)
It is now available open source on the court’s website per details below.
U.S. District Court
District of Columbia
Notice of Electronic Filing
Case Name:
| UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. ALL ASSETS HELD IN ACCOUNT NUMBER 80020796, IN THE NAME OF DORAVILLE PROPERTIES CORPORATION, AT DEUTSCHE BANK INTERNATIONAL, LIMITED IN JERSEY, CHANNEL ISLANDS, AND ALL INTEREST, BENEFITS OR ASSETS TR et al | |
| Case Number: | 1:13-cv-01832-JDB |
| Filer: | EMMANUEL OGEBE |
| Document Number: | 405 |
Docket Text:
THIRD SUPPLEMENTAL MEMORANDUM to re [384] MOTION for Leave to File filed by EMMANUEL OGEBE. (Attachment: # (1) Appendix)(zjm)
1:13-cv-01832-JDB Notice has been electronically mailed
