{"id":57609,"date":"2022-05-16T13:00:41","date_gmt":"2022-05-16T13:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=57609"},"modified":"2022-05-16T13:00:41","modified_gmt":"2022-05-16T13:00:41","slug":"kebbi-governor-bagudu-named-again-in-23m-abacha-loot-recovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=57609","title":{"rendered":"Kebbi Governor, Bagudu, named again in $23m Abacha loot recovery"},"content":{"rendered":"

The men who helped Abacha launder $23 million recently recovered by UK govt<\/strong><\/h1>\n

The $23.5 million Abacha loot recovered this month by the UK\u2019s\u00a0National Crime Agency\u00a0(NCA) was forfeited by Mohammed Abacha and an offshore company Mecosta Securities Inc., the British agency has told PREMIUM TIMES.<\/p>\n

PREMIUM TIMES\u2019 further investigation, based on the NCA\u2019s exclusive disclosure and analysis of leaked financial records and court documents, shows that Mecosta\u2019s account in London, from which the stolen funds were recovered, was controlled by Kebbi State Governor, Atiku Bagudu. In the 1990s, Mr Bagudu worked in the role of an Abacha bagman helping to\u00a0steal and stash\u00a0hundreds of millions of dollars across the world.<\/p>\n

On May 5, the NCA released a statement disclosing the recovery of \u201c$23,439,724.98 siphoned out of Nigeria in the 1990s\u201d by the Abacha family and associates.<\/p>\n

The agency said it acted at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The USDOJ started its civil forfeiture case \u2013 and has since obtained forfeiture orders \u2013 in the district court in Washington D.C. against stolen Nigerian assets linked to Mr Abacha. USDOJ told the court the assets were routed through the American jurisdiction and stashed in several other jurisdictions, including the UK, by the Abacha family and associates, most notably Mr Bagudu.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe funds form part of a larger pool of monies identified by the United States Department of Justice (USDOJ) as having been misappropriated by Abacha and his associates,\u201d the NCA said. It added that it obtained the recovery order after nearly seven years of litigation in the UK to enforce the U.S. forfeiture order related to the recovered funds.<\/p>\n

However, the NCA in its statement did not disclose the specific individuals or entities from whom the stolen funds had been recovered.<\/p>\n

Recovered from Mohammed and Bagudu\u2019s secret company<\/strong><\/p>\n

PREMIUM TIMES contacted the agency with a request for specific and undisclosed information.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe monies were recovered from Mohammed Sani Abacha and Mecosta Securities Inc,\u201d said NCA\u2019s communications manager Stuart Hadley in an emailed reply.<\/p>\n

PREMIUM TIMES then used leaked financial records such as Pandora Papers and the USDOJ court documents to establish Mr Bagudu\u2019s association with Mecosta.<\/p>\n

The Standard Bank London account of the offshore company Mecosta, registered in the British Virgin Islands on October 9, 1995, was controlled by Mr Bagudu, who helped Mr Abacha steal and launder Nigerian monies across jurisdictions with complicated financial transactions, according to leaked financial and U.S. court documents seen by PREMIUM TIMES.<\/p>\n

The court documents specifically said that a sum of $21.7 million targeted for forfeiture was held in Mecosta\u2019s account at Standard Bank London controlled by Mr Bagudu.<\/p>\n

Mr Bagudu, who was twice elected federal lawmaker, has been the governor of Nigeria\u2019s northwestern Kebbi State since 2015 and is an ally of President Muhammadu Buhari.<\/p>\n

\u201cBagudu is an example of how Nigeria\u2019s kleptocratic political class enjoys power and privilege despite their clear and condemnable track record,\u201d commented Mathew Page, a Nigerian governance expert.<\/p>\n

Mr Bagudu has never been charged and enjoys immunity from prosecution in Nigeria while he holds office as governor of a state.<\/p>\n

Apart from the Standard Bank, Mr Bagudu was the authorised signatory on the accounts of Mecosta at other banks such as ANZ, London; Credit Agricole Indosuez London; Goldman Sachs, Zurich, and Banque Baring Brothers in Geneva, according to the U.S. court documents obtained.<\/p>\n

It is believed that the $21.7 million stashed in the Mecosta\u2019s Standard Bank London\u2019s account controlled by Mr Bagudu was the far larger part of the $23.5 million recently recovered by the NCA.<\/p>\n

The other part, it is believed based on our review of USDOJ\u2019s court filing and the definite disclosure by the NCA, is $1.6 million in an HSBC account in the name of Mohammed Abacha, the late dictator\u2019s son.<\/p>\n

Abacha plunder machine<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the plunder machine that late kleptocrat Mr Abacha set up, Mr Bagudu was the most prolific bagman, court documents and leaked financial records revealed.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbubakar Atiku Bagudu was an associate of General Abacha and his sons who participated in the conspiracy to steal and launder hundreds of millions of dollars,\u201d American investigators told the court. \u201cAmong other things, Bagudu played an instrumental role in setting up and executing the complicated financial transactions used to launder the proceeds of the conspiracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Abacha, his family, and associates systematically plundered Nigeria between 1993 when the dictator seized power and 1998 when he died. In conspiracy with his family and associates, he stole up to $5 billion, according to Transparency International.<\/p>\n

According to American investigators, they used false security claims to steal at least $2 billion dollars, which \u201cwas transported out of Nigeria and deposited into accounts controlled by General Abacha\u2019s associates, including Mohammed Abacha and Bagudu.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was apart from other stolen funds through bribery and a dramatic conspiracy by Mr Abacha\u2019s son, Mohammed, and Mr Bagudu to lend money stolen from Nigeria back to Nigeria \u201cwith zero risks and at an enormous profit\u201d by using proceeds of the security vote fraud to purchase hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. dollar-denominated Nigerian bonds, called Nigerian Par Bonds, NPBs.<\/p>\n

Between 1998 and now, more than $3.6 billion dollars has been recovered through international efforts with different tranches linked to Mr Bagudu alone.<\/p>\n

The systematic plunder as well as the worldwide hunt for the stolen funds, worth billions of dollars, is reckoned to be one of the worst cases of kleptocracy and offshore shenanigans in the world.<\/p>\n

The $21.7 million in the account of Mecosta at Standard Bank and the $1.6 million held in the name of Mohammed Abacha at HSBC were part of the stolen funds, American investigators said, and are believed to form the $23 million recovered by the NCA based on our analysis.<\/p>\n

The NCA said it had transferred the recovered funds to the U.S. with the \u201cultimate intention\u201d being the repatriation to Nigeria for the benefit of the people in the West African nation.<\/p>\n

NCA said it would not answer our question if Nigeria was involved in a tripartite deal over this particular recovery. It also did not disclose the outstanding Abacha-linked assets being targeted for forfeiture in London.<\/p>\n

However, PREMIUM TIMES understands from our\u00a0Pandora Papers investigation\u00a0that nearly 100 million euros kept in London investments accounts of Mr Bagudu\u2019s Blue family trusts and holdings are among the outstanding assets.<\/p>\n

Mr Page said the revelations about Mr Bagudu \u201csuggest he has held unto significant quantities of unexplained wealth accumulated in the Abacha years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Bagudu did not honour our request for his comment on this report, a consistent pattern since we started reporting his link to the Abacha kleptocracy.<\/p>\n

Mohammed Abacha also did not reply to a text or answer calls to seek his comment.<\/p>\n

\u25aa\ufe0e Report by Premium Times<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The men who helped Abacha launder $23 million recently recovered by UK govt The $23.5 million Abacha loot recovered this month by the UK\u2019s\u00a0National Crime Agency\u00a0(NCA) was forfeited by Mohammed Abacha and an offshore company Mecosta Securities Inc., the British agency has told PREMIUM TIMES. PREMIUM TIMES\u2019 further investigation, based on the NCA\u2019s exclusive disclosure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":57610,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[4723,941,1083],"class_list":["post-57609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-23m","tag-abacha","tag-bagudu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}