LOOTING NIGERIA - THE LONDON CONNECTION

Script

Duration 8”38”

October 2000

General Sani Abacha. For five years he ruled Nigeria in the most ruthless regime in the country’s history. Notoriously, he had jailed and executed his opponents, including human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. But most of all he looted the country. Before he died two years ago, he stole between $4 and $10 billion dollars. At least half a billion went through London. Now Nigeria’s new, democratic government wants it back.

SOT Obesanjo

 

(Name Super 00’29”: OLUSEGUN OBESANJO,President of Nigeria)

This is our money. We have proven it is our money. Freeze the accounts, and repatriate the money in the account, and if anything has to be chased from that account, we expect to chase the money and get it back from wherever it has gone, and get the money back to Nigeria.

PTC

(Name Super 01’01”: ED HARRIMAN)

Today a high powered government team chaired by the Home Office and including the Serious Fraud Office, the Metropolitan and City Police is pouring over a detailed confidential document. It’s the Nigerian government’s formal request for assistance to find out what’s happened to money it has evidence passed thorough London banks. “London,” it says, “was used to transfer out of Nigeria and to launder the proceeds of … pillaging.”

Comm

Channel Four News can reveal that the Nigerian submission gives details of dozens of accounts held by the Abacha family, their cronies and off shore companies, at sixteen London banks. Personal accounts through which passed millions at the Midland - now HSBC, and NatWest. Barclays from where some $60 million now suspected of being bribes was transferred to Abacha accounts. Citibank Private Bank, Merrill Lynch. And ANZ through which over $55 million was moved.

But how is it, if the Nigerian evidence is sound, that London banks have been used by what President Obesanjo calls the Abacha Criminal Organisation? By law the City’s banks are supposed to ring alarm bells if they suspect they are being used to handle the proceeds of criminal activities.

SOT Toby Graham

(Name Super 02’04”: TOBY GRAHAM, Convenor, Anti-Corruption Working Group)

The bank is supposed to if it has knowledge or suspicion that the monies that it is handling represent the proceeds of criminal conduct make a disclosure to a constable or in practice the National Criminal Intelligence Service.

Comm

But what did the City do? The ways General Abacha looted Nigeria were ruthlessly crude and effective.

SOT Obesanjo

General Abacha and those around him did direct looting, direct stealing from the treasury through what they call security vote. They just write an amount of money which is approved by Abacha himself and of course is siphoned out. And the estimate is that what has been stolen through that method is in the region of about $2.2 billion.

Comm

The Chief bagman at the heart of the operation was Abacha’s son, Mohammed Sani. Today he’s in jail in Nigeria awaiting trial for conspiracy to murder. But when his dad was milking he country, Mohammed often came to London - where he stayed in a flat bought for himself in West Kensington. From here he sometimes moved money in and out of London banks and around the world financial system.

(Super 3’30”: RECONSTRUCTION)

One port of call was also to the offices Smith and Tyers in South London, of David Jones, a long standing family business friend from before when General Abacha took power. Today the Nigerian government has asked the Home Office to help find out what happened as regards a document which appears to be for a $1 ¼ million transfer to Jones last year sanctioned by Abacha’s son Mohammed.

We talked to David Jones who described today’s Nigerian investigations as “fog and mist” and declined to be interviewed.

Another stop, the discrete office of Citibank’s Private Bank off Berkeley Square. Here Abacha’s son was a valued customer. One of his accounts here was in a front name. There was a special code, and instructions not to forward mail or talk on the phone.

Last year a US Senate committee investigated Citibank Private bank’s relationship with the Abachas. It found that the bank’s behaviour was not up to expected standards. We showed the committee’s evidence to Toby Graham.

SOT Toby Graham

The amounts that are being banked are enormous by anyone’s standards. Far beyond what you would expect the president or the head of state or his family to be legitimately banking each year. Questions would be asked about where this money is coming from. And they were asked and there were no satisfactory answers. There are various vague explanations about petroleum monies and trading in commodities. This would, one would expect, have led to a general level of concern within the bank and it is therefore surprising that the bank did not do more at an earlier stage.

Comm

The Senate Committee identified Mr Michael Mathews as the Citibank executive who nurtured the Abachas’ relationship with the bank both before and for a few years after the General seized power.

SOT Toby Graham

Mr Mathews seems to be the prime contact with the customer. It’s obviously difficult to know precisely what Mr Mathews knew but I would be slightly surprised if he didn’t have some concerns about the provenance of this money.

Comm

Perhaps none of Abacha’s looting was more cynical than one of their company’s contract to supply vaccines for Nigeria’s children. The company was paid $111 million from Nigerian state funds though the vaccines cost only $23 million. Much of the $88 million profit is still missing. At the time, some Citibank employees were alarmed. Yet the bank went ahead with it’s role in the financing.

SOT Toby Graham

The vaccine contract is perhaps one of the most striking examples from the documents. The individuals within the bank that were asked to sanction this raised some concerns. One lady goes into print that her gut feel wasn’t quite right, and that this is in her view a rum transaction.

 

Comm

Citibank say that neither they nor Mr Mathews have done anything wrong. Mr Mathews declined to be interviewed. Now 15 other London banks may soon be hearing from the Serious Fraud Office. The banks we name told Channel Four News they acted in good faith and will help with enquiries. The British Bankers’ Association does not seem unduly alarmed.

SOT Tim Sweeney

(Name Super 07’26”: TIM SWEENEY, British Bankers’ Association)

Suspicion is a state of mind, and your suspicion may be different from my suspicion. It is judgmental. And I believe that banks on the whole behave very responsibly. Sometimes they will get it wrong.

 

Comm

But how often do they get it wrong? In a recent report the Cabinet Office points out that the City of London has a poor record for its size for notifying authorities of suspected illegal dealings by clients, and calls for tough new measures. So too does President Obesanjo.

SOT Obesanjo

I believe that in banking just as in other professions there are ethical standards that must be maintained. And ethical standards that must be maintained in banking is when you know…because if you take, if you receive a stolen good you are an accomplice, you are as guilty as the thief.

Comm

President Obesanjo has told us he has written to Tony Blair asking him personally to help. This is the first big test of the government’s commitment to making sure the City has no dealings with the proceeds of international corruption and crime.

ends

Name Supers:

OLUSEGUN OBESANJO

President of Nigeria

ED HARRIMAN

TOBY GRAHAM

Convenor, Society for Advanced Legal Studies Anti-Corruption Working Group

TIM SWEENEY

British Bankers’ Association

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