Diezani, Omokore, Aluko Bribe Saga: US Court Papers Reveal What Each Person Got From Stolen Nigeria’s Oil Money

Court papers obtained from the United States of America have exposed how Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, the former immediate past Minister of Petroleum Resources, received high-end properties in the United States and the United Kingdom in exchange for facilitating illicit business opportunities in Nigeria's oil and gas sectors for two business partners, Messrs. Jide Omokore and Akanni Aluko.
The papers, obtained by SaharaReporters, are related to a civil forfeiture notice filed against the trio and two conspirators by the U.S. Department of Justice, with prosecutors showing that Messrs. Omokore and Aluko bought four residential properties in and around London worth £11.45 million for the use of Mrs. Alison-Madueke, her mother and other members of her family.
Some of the properties, the US court papers showed, were renovated at eye-watering costs, fitted with luxury items, including art works, to provide a lush lifestyle for Mrs. Alison-Madueke. The court processes, filed at the Houston Division of the US District Court, revealed that company named Miranda International Limited, owned by Mr. Omokore, purchased a property known as “The Falls” for £3,250,000. The property is located just outside London at 96 Camp Road, Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire SL9 7PB.
After the purchase, said US prosecutors, Mr. Omokore's sidekick, Mr. Aluko, engaged a construction company to carry out an upgrade of the property and maintain the plumbing, electrical, air conditioning, and audio-visual systems.
"Omokore and Aluko purchased and improved The Falls for the exclusive use of Alison-Madueke and her family. A mobile telephone recovered at the known residence of Alison-Madueke and her mother contained digital photographs of Alison-Madueke present inside The Falls," said prosecutors. They added that during the period, Mrs. Alison-Madueke, who was strictly addressed by service providers as “The Madam” in the home, was the only occupant of the property.
Around 8 October, prosecutors found that Mr. Aluko, using his American Express card, purchased two identical exercise machines at Harrods in London at the cost of £10,926 each. One of the machines was ordered to delivered to the known London address of the former Petroleum Minister, while the other was to be delivered to The Falls.
In March 2011, just four days before Aluko met with National Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) unpaid bill," the court papers further stated.
Prosecutors discovered that roughly one month after the assault, Tenka paid a total of £135,361.48 to the chauffeur company.
The former minister's two cronies also bought her luxury furniture in Houston, Texas. Prosecutors said they were told by an employee of Houston Furniture Store that Mrs. Alison-Madueke visited his showroom on multiple occasions, during which she would identify specific items of interest to her, which the employee would photograph.
The court papers stated that the former minister's purchases were always paid for by someone else. In particular, said prosecutors, the furniture store employee recalled that Mr. Omokore was the first person to visit the store and to pay for her selections.
The trip was in September 2010, when Mrs. Alison-Madueke was in Houston to deliver a keynote address at Rice University. While in the US, Mrs. Alison-Madueke’s cronies wired a total of $197,600 to Houston Furniture Store in two separate transactions on or about September 30, 2010, and October 1, 2010. The payments were said to be in settlement of approximately $200,000 worth of purchases signed for by Mr. Omokore. Also on October 7, 2010, Houston Furniture Store drew up two additional sales invoices in Mr. Omokore’s name amounting to $23,703.50. The following day, he emailed emailed photographs of the items listed on these additional sales invoices directly to the former Petroleum Minister. On October 9, 2010, Mrs. Alison-Madueke responded by email to him: “Thx. (Thanks) cabinet is the correct one.”
Four days later, Mr. Omokore authorized Houston Furniture Store to charge his Nevada company another $23,703.50 as payment for the additional furniture purchases made in his name and discussed, via
email, directly with Mrs. Alison-Madueke.
In October 2010, Mr. Aluko arranged with Houston Furniture Store to combine the recent purchases made by himself and Mr. Omokore from its two outlets and to ship the merchandise to Mr. Omokore in Lagos.
The court papers stated that at least one of the items purchased in Mr. Omokore’s name and paid for by him has been matched by vendor number, item number, and store-issued control number to furniture discovered in Mrs. Alison-Madueke’s Abuja residence. Purchases made by for her by her cronies included 1564774 Luigi XVI Sideboard at $10,829.00, 1373385 George III Console at $2,999.00 and 1479702 Jappaned Secretaire at $5,508.00.
Mr. Aluko was also found to have returned to the furniture store on May 4, 2011, and purchased another $53,890.08 worth of merchandise. In May 2012, Mr. Aluko wired $461,500 to Houston Furniture Store from a bank account ending in -090038 held in his name at LGT Bank (Schweiz) AG in Switzerland (the LGT -090038 Account).
Also on May 4, 2012, he purchased an additional $262,091.47 worth of furniture at Houston Furniture Store. On June 1, 2012, he wired $280,595.81 to the furniture store from his LGT -090038 Account as payment for the purchases. In or around March 2013, Houston Furniture Store arranged a shipment of furniture comprising a subset of items from Mr. Aluko’s May 2012 purchases at the two outlets of Houston Furniture Store. The shipment was sent from Houston to Lagos, Nigeria.
The consignee was listed by prosecutors as Mr. Chijioke Isiolu, a lawyer to Mr. Omokore. One of the furniture items purchased by Mr. Aluko on May 4, 2012, has been matched by vendor number, item number and store-issued control number and found in Mrs. Madueke’s Abuja home.
The Hollywood lifestyle bestowed on Mrs. Alison-Madueke by Messrs. Omokore and Aluko was payment for her role in bending Nigeria's rules to benefit them. As Petroleum Minister, she was in charge of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and used her powers to award a series of Strategic Alliance Agreements (SAAs) between the companies owned by the two cronies and and the NPDC.
Her cronies' companies were found to have been neither qualified for the favors they got nor performed obligations stated in the agreements. Yet, they creamed off over $1.5billion in revenues from the sale of Nigeria's crude oil, a sum they laundered into the US and United Kingdom. The cronies' trick was to use a variety of shell companies and multi-layered financial transactions to mask the nature, location and ownership of the inappropriate wealth.
Messrs. Aluko and Omokore are the owners of Atlantic Energy Holdings Limited Atlantic Energy Brass Development and its subsidiaries, Atlantic Drilling Concepts Nigeria Limited and Atlantic Energy Brass
Development Limited. He also has interests in Tenka Limited and wholly owns Earnshaw Associates Limited.  Their Atlantic Energy Drilling Concepts (AECD) and Atlantic Energy Energy Holdings Limited (AEH) were incorporated in the British Virgin Islands. Tenka Limited was incorporated in the UK, with Mr. Aluko and wife as directors. Before 2010, when Mrs. Alison-Madueke became minister, the NNPC was involved in a joint venture (JV), as a subsidiary of a major international oil company (IOC) for the development and production of oil and gas in connection with eight oil mining leases (OMLs).
The JV held interests in and operated OMLs 26, 30, 34, and 42 (in Forcados) as well as 60, 61, 62 and 63 (in Brass). The IOC subsidiary owned 45 per cent of the JV, with the NNPC owning the remaining. The IOC subsidiary, in 2010, divested itself and sold its minority stake, selling to various indigenous companies and leaving NNPC with the responsibility for financing and operating the OMLs.
That task was assigned, along with its own 55 per cent stake, to its subsidiary, the NPDC, which lacked the expertise and financial resources to run the OMLs. On account of this, NPDC sought to go into
SAAs with outside companies with capacity to for finance and technical expertise.
AEDC, incorporated in July 2010, barely three months after Mrs. Alison-Madueke was appointed minister, was awarded OMLs 26, 30,34, and 42.  AEDC, in March 2011, announced its first interest in entering into an SAA in a letter to NPDC. Barely three weeks later, Mr. Aluko, representing AEDC, met NPDC officials to discuss a possible SAA award. In the next three weeks, the company and NPDC entered into SAAs for OMLs 26 and 42. About a month later, both parties entered into two more agreements for OMLs 30 and 34, with Mr. Omokore signing on behalf of AEDC.       
Prosecutors said the SAAS were awarded on the say-so of Mrs. Alison-Madueke.
"For example, in a recorded conversation between Alison-Madueke and Aluko, Alison-Madueke acknowledged that 'we stuck our necks out regarding the SAA and we supported it," said the US court papers. This was despite the fact that a February 2014 report issued by the then Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr. Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, stated that AEDC “had neither the technical expertise nor the capital to develop the joint venture, but [was] nonetheless able to lift crude and retain the proceeds . . . up to 70% of the profit of the Joint Venture.”
The report concluded that the arrangement was set up “for the purpose of acquiring assets belonging to the [Federal Republic of Nigeria] and transferring the income to private hands”.
The SAAs required AEDC to pay non-recoverable entry fees prior to the agreements taking effect. The value of the entry fees was to be determined based on the estimated probable oil and gas reserves within the area covered by the Forcados OMLs. In addition, the Forcados SAAs each required AEDC to pay $350,000 per year to NPDC for the first five years of the agreements for the provision of training facilities for NPDC staff. They also required AEDC to “provide all the funds required for NPDC’s 55% share of Petroleum Operating Costs.”
Prosecutors, however, found that NPDC’s share of the operating costs for the OMLs from March 2011 through December 2015, was at least $1,400,000,000. In return for meeting its obligations under the SAAs, AEDC would be entitled to recover the cost of financing NPDC’s share of the operating costs and would be further entitled to a share of NPDC’s profit as determined by profit-sharing formulae contained in the SAAs.
AEDC’s entitlements, said the court papers, were payable through the company receiving allocations of available oil sufficient to cover the amounts due as cost-recovery and profit.
These obligations were not fulfilled.
“AEDC substantially failed to perform under the Forcados SAAs. In particular, AEDC did not fulfill its requirement to fund training facilities for NPDC staff, leading to an outstanding obligation of approximately $5,600,000. Furthermore, AEDC failed to cover NPDC’s share of the Forcados operating costs. Of the more than $1,400,000,000 required to finance such costs, AEDC made contributions of only approximately $305,108,522.43. Despite AEDC’s failure to fulfil its obligations under the Forcados SAAs, AEDC was allocated and permitted to lift and sell, for its own benefit, 21 cargoes of crude oil valued at approximately $677,238,673,” stated the court papers.
As the drenched Mrs. Alison-Madueke in immodest opulence, Messrs. Aluko and Omokore also showered gifts on the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to which they donated vehicles worth N800million. They equally bought cars valued at over N130million for Mrs. Alison-Madueke and top shots of NPDC. For himself, Mr. Aluko paid $18,548,619.99 and N1,070,000,000 to FBN Mortgages Limited as part-payment for 26 Flats at 46 Gerrard Road Ikoyi Lagos. The total cost of the flats was N5,210,520,315. He also paid $25,839,606.77and N95,000,000 to Real Bank to part-finance the acquisition and renovation of properties by the Atlantic Energy Drilling Concepts Nigeria Limited (AEDC) and Atlantic Energy Brass Development limited (AEBD).
These included Mason Apartments at 6 Gerrard Road Ikoyi Lagos, comprising 60 units of three-bedroom apartment valued at $78,000,000; Marion Apartments Banana Island, Ikoyi, Lagos, consisting of 43 units at the cost of $76,160,000, 33A Cooper Road Ikoyi, which was renovated at a of $4,937,750 and Admiralty Towers at 8 Gerrard Road Ikoyi, Lagos.
The two businessmen transferred $69,912,981.15 to Mia Hotels Limited, First Motors Limited, V.I. Petrochemicals, Evergreen Reality & Management, WIz Trade Limited, DE First Union Integrated Services and Amity Plus limited.
Mr. Aluko acquired for himself high-end properties at Grove End Road, London NW;  755 Sarbone Road, Los Angeles;952 North Alpine Drive Los Angeles; and 815 Cima Del Mundo. He also bought land at  807 Coma Del Mundo in Los Angeles.
He equally bought homes or apartments at 1049 Fifth Avenue, New York, 1948&1952 Tolls Avenue, Santa Barbara, 157 West 57th St,New York , 4100 Let Revenge, Dubai.
In Nigeria, he bought Avenue Towers in Lagos; bought a piece of  land in Mont Tremblat, Canada and a property at Colina D’oro Montagnola, Switzerland.
He acquired the luxury yacht, Galactica Star, at the cost of $80million. He bought 58 exotic cars, expensive watches, private jets, Global Express S5-GMG and a Bombardier Global 6000 9H-OPE.
Court documents show that his bank accounts heaved with cash. According to the documents, he had a bank balance of $25million in LDT Switzerland, $1million at Corner Bank, Lugano, Switzerland; $40million at Deutsche Bank, Geneva; and  $175,000 at HSBC, London.
He had 75% stake AECD and Atlantic Energy Brass Development as well as 10% stake in Seven Energy.

Still On The Executive-Legislature Slugfest On The Budget By Peter Claver Oparah

For Nigerians, it should not be difficult to understand the reason why the country’s budget process has become so controversial since the present Muhammadu Buhari government came on board. Nigerians saw all the melodrama that attended the budget process last year, with all the hype about budget padding. The budget padding drama so delayed the passage of the budget last year such that the budget was signed just at the stroke of full time, when the previous budget had ran its full course and a new budget year was about to start. Without allegations of budget padding this year, the budget even took longer time to get approved. The National Assembly held on to the budget proposal till after the previous budget’s operational year ended and the nation was well into a new budget year. What this shows is that there is more to the budget process since Buhari came in with a determination to stamp out corruption.
Before Buhari, the budgetary process was less contentious. It was a staid, dour ritual where the executives and the legislature agreed before time to share out the budget amongst themselves and their interests. Before Buhari, budgets had no impact and sparked no interest among the common man whose interests were neither captured nor represented in that yearly ritual. The common man was so powerless and meaningless in the budgetary process that he took slight interest in either the process or its implementation. That was  the era of huge constituency projects where legislators; elected to make laws for the good governance of the country, became contractors who directly or indirectly executed the many projects they insert in the budget through the infamous constituency project scheme. The pay-off was that the members of the executive were free to do whatever they liked with the huge budgetary allocations in the various ministries and parastatals they superintended without attracting the constitutional checks the legislature should exert. It was a rub-my-back-I-rub-your-back scheme that left the citizenry, and indeed the entire country, holding the shortest ends of the stick.
In the sequel captured above, projects got huge allocations every year but with little or no work done at the end of each budget year. The so-called constituency projects, being a sham scheme by legislatures to corruptly enrich themselves, ended up siphoning public funds into the pockets of legislators with no projects done at the end of the day. The payback was to the huge corruption the members of the legislature perpetrated and the country bled from this gargantuan corruption complex as it endured.
In the vicious circle captured above, Nigeria witnessed a scandalous infrastructure deficit, despite the hefty revenue that accrued to the country. Huge monies and resources allocated to diverse projects found their ways into the pockets of dubious state officials, the poverty index widened and the scepters of a failed state loomed so large that Nigerians became hopeless for a redeeming factor that would track this sordid state. Certain projects became permanent features in each year’s budgets and uncompleted projects littered the Nigerian space as they became ready conduits for stealing the people’s resources through yearly allocations in the budget. The poverty index widened, even at the period Nigeria enjoyed unprecedented oil boom and corruption grew in leaps and bounds.
But it took the coming of President Buhari with his anti-corruption commitment to reverse this negative trend. Buhari knew that one area that must be paid more than a passing attention in fighting corruption is the budgetary process, where the huge resources of Nigerians were made available for the enrichment of just few individuals in the executive, the legislature and the executive. He knew that with the dereliction of duties by the legislature in the budgetary process through the cornering of constituency projects, the national budgets have always come awry at the end and the huge allocations stolen each year through a tripartite scheme by the executives, the legislature and the civil servants. This, he felt, must stop and what better way to stop than stop using the budget as a feel-good project than to strip at source, those illicit practices that prevents the law makers from carrying out their constitutional roles in the budgetary process?
What we are witnessing with the budget since Buhari came is a determined effort by the legislature to retain the corruptive features that have made our national budget unproductive for many decades now. The National Assembly wants the retention of the old, sordid order that has short-changed the country for years and enriched its members. That has brought it in direct conflict with the Buhari executive that wants to change the rotten order and make yearly budgets, its approval and implementation processes a project for the people. This commitment accounts for the heightened interests Nigerians have, for the first time, shown to the budget process and the implementation. It has been the cause of the controversy budgets have been immersed in for two years now. It is no more a quiet, dour, process through which money is shared between the members of the legislature, the executives and civil servants. It has become a people’s process and Nigerians=s are taking more than a passing interest in the evolution and implementation of their yearly budget, and that is how it should be.
So, the altercation over who should do what with the budget arises out of the gritty fight to either retain the budget in its utterly corrupt former form or chart a new paradigm whereby budgets should make more impact and meaning to the people. The legislators don’t want constituency projects to go because that is a source of tremendous illicit enrichment for them. To be sure, no one will argue that the legislature has critical and important role to play in the budget process. I don’t think the executive, in their present stance argues this. If they do, they would not have taken the proposals to the legislature and made the country endure several months of anxiety before the budget was finally passed. But there is everything wrong where the legislature creates new projects and inserts them in the budget. There is everything wrong in a situation where legislators mutilate the budget proposals sent in by the executive, shred it out of context for the purpose of carving out funds to allocate to phantom constituency projects. There is everything wrong in a situation where the legislature either removes critical developmental projects proposed by the executives or drastically reduces funds from them so as to create funds for their self-fangled projects which have no impact on the national development index, which is the ultimate end of a budget.
We have witnessed the barrage of exchange between the National Assembly and the Minister of Works, Power and Housing, Babatunde Fashola. The disagreement is premised on the complaint by the Minister that the National Assembly drastically cut the proposed budgets for such critical infrastructures like the Second Niger Bridge, the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, the Mambilla Power project, etc and re-directed such funds to flimsy projects like motorized boreholes, health centers, street lights, etc which were captured as constituency projects. This is as atrocious as it is absolutely illegal. The implication in this gross violation of constitutional power is that the nation will prepare to suffer continued infrastructural and developmental decay so that legislators will satisfy their crave for illicit money. Also by this dubious action, which is not limited to Fashola’s ministry alone, is that Nigeria’s developmental growth will remain a myriad because the tongs of corruption amongst our law makers must be met by all means necessary. This is as self serving as it is unpatriotic.
I have witnessed the exchange of words between the minister and the National Assembly and I am surprised that while the minister makes compelling and unputdownable arguments to express himself, the National Assembly, clearly oblivious of the untenable nature  of its actions, has rather resorted to name calling, blackmail and insults in responding to Fashola’s challenge. The one line that comes from the National Assembly and its supporters in defending this horrible action is that the constitution grants it power to do whatever it wishes with the budget; an argument that is hollow, unreasonable and not backed by any provision of the constitution. Even as they have not shown the provision of the constitution that grants them such wide powers, it leaves us to wonder that if indeed they have unlimited power to do anything with the budget, to the extent that they will mutilate and replace a sizeable part of the budget with their own whimsical project, why did the law not give them the power to each year, work out a budget and throw it at the executive to implement?
The law grants the executive the power to propose budget estimates. In doing this, it brings all the available expertise in determining the possible revenue accruable to a country at any given year and allocates such revenue to the needs of the country. This is an exclusive executive function and for which we pay professionals in that regard. This is why we fund a huge ministry responsible for budget and National planning. There is no where the law gives this power to legislators, constitutionally mandated to make laws for the order and good governance of the country. What the constitution provides for the legislature is the power to scrutinize, question and approve these proposed budget estimates presented by the executive. It cannot mutilate the budget beyond the developmental intendments of the executive, as was done in the present budget. It cannot hack projects by itself and insert same in the budget because it is neither empowered nor is the legislature equipped with the faculties to do so. In other words, no law grants the legislature the power to introduce a new budget head in the budget, approve same by itself and pass as national budget. By usurping the power to propose and adding to its power to approve, the legislature clearly breaches the law of separation of power. It generates, proposes and somehow, executes these so called constituency projects. There is no country where the legislature proposes new projects and inserts them in the budget. It is an aberration. It is unexplainable and it is illegal. Both the law and commonsense cannot provide this aberration that clearly vitiates the principle of power separation.
I have heard the porous arguments of the legislature and its supporters to wit; that they are elected by the people and they must give the people something in return in form of projects. Mere hogwash!
Was the executive elected by ghosts? Collectively, all the legislators were elected by just a fraction of the total voters that elected the President. Which legislator was elected because he promised to build
roads, buy motorcycles, sink boreholes or provide grinding machines from the national budget? If legislators made such promise to their constituents before being elected, what are the duties of local governments? How come, legislators appropriated the duties of the executive such that they promise constituents what is clearly outside their constitutional functions in the quest for votes? In fact, what
are the duties of the executives if law makers now promise constitutions projects in exchange for votes?
The best the legislators can do to get their pet projects captured in the budget is to approach the executives so such projects could be captured in the budget preparatory stage if they are in symmetry with national development plan and not to wait for the proposed budget, mutilate it, remove critical projects and insert their selfish projects. In all the defenses I have read being put by the National Assembly for its meddlesomeness in the budget proves, all I hear is that the constitution gives them the power of appropriation. Does such power also include proposing the budget? I have never seen the
legislature answer in any way the hanging question; who does the valuation and costing of such projects they smuggle into the budget?
However, as their actions in inserting hundreds of projects into the budget (I heard it is over 300 projects in this year’s budget) are illegal, the executive should not touch any of those items at the project implementation stage because they are illegal. The legislature cannot propose and approve the budget. Again, these projects distort the national developmental plan and most importantly, are funnels
through which the members of the legislature want to siphon the resources of the country. Most importantly, let the executive approach the Supreme Court to put a final stop on this crass illegality before
presenting the next budget.  The corruptive and illegal tampering of Nigeria’s national budgets for the purpose of satisfying the restive craving of our legislators for illicit enrichment must be stopped,


Peter Claver Oparah writes from Ikeja, Lagos. You can reach him at peterclaver2000@yahoo.com.

Death Toll Of Senator Uba’s Tank Farm Explosion Rises To 11

The death toll of Sunday’s explosion at Linc Oil and Gas Depot, a tank farm in Calabar, Cross River State owned by Senator Andy Uba, has risen from 9 to 11, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.
According to the news agency, nine survivors were admitted to the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital (UCHT) after the explosion on Sunday. Two of those patients died on Monday morning.
Senator Andy Uba (Anambra South) Guardian NG The chief medical director of the UCHT, Thomas Agan, said the hospital needs assistance from the federal government in order to adequately treat the remaining patients, who suffer from severe burns.
“We had to use all we had to ensure that they are kept alive. Our consumables are now exhausted,” he told NAN.
“We need massive assistance, not only from the federal government, but from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and all the facilities involved in the matter.”
At the time of publication, the direct cause of the explosion had not been ascertained. Cross River State Commissioner for Petroleum Itaya Nyong told NAN that the commission would conduct a thorough investigation into the incident.


 that the tank farm is owned by Senator Andy Uba of Anambra State. The senator, a who served as an aide to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, stated on his assets declaration that he owns “Linc Nigeria Limited,” which he described as an “oil tank farm” in Calabar, Cross River State.