$2 BILLION ABACHA LOOT: How Bagudu, Daura, Gwarzo laundered the funds

·     Nine US banks involved

·     Malami tussles with Nigerian attorneys in America over legal fees

More facts have emerged as to how the late Gen­eral Sani Abacha and his cronies fleeced Nigeria of over $2 billion – and laun­dered the loot abroad using nine American banks.

Indeed, documents in the possession of The AUTHORI­TY have exposed the key partic­ipants in the looting spree of the late Head of State, Gen. Aba­cha, and how they transferred the stolen monies to the United States of America (USA).

The key actors in the loot saga included the late dictator’s son, Mohammed Sani Abacha; Alhaji Abubakar Atiku Bagudu, Alhaji Ismaila Gwarzo, Alhaji Ahmadu Daura, Chief Anthony Ani, Mr. David Umaru, Dumez Group, Doraville Properties Corporation, Eagle Alliance International Limited (Eagle Alliance), Mecosta Securities (Inc.), Rayville International SA, Ridley Group Limited, Standard Alliance Financial Services Limited and Dumez Nigeria Limited.

Issues relating to the re­covery of the money have become a subject of legal tussle between the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), Alhaji Abubakar Malami and Messrs Jude Chukwuma Ezeala, Ken­neth Nnaka, Godson Nnaka and Charles Lion Agwumezie, US-based attorneys who claimed they were instrumental to the discovery of the loot.

The attorneys have unsuc­cessfully struggled to be paid $220 million as legal fees, cal­culated at a substantial percent­age of the recovered loot.

The US District Court for the District of Columbia, pre­sided over by Justice John D. Bates, had on May 6, 2016, re­jected the motion for attorney’s fee made by Nnaka and others because Nigeria was not a party to the asset forfeiture litigation held in the US and also because the AGF “wrote to the US gov­ernment asserting that Nnaka and his team lacked the author­ity to represent Nigeria”.

The court, however, lam­pooned Nigeria’s AGFs (names withheld) over what it described as the recourse by them to ask for kick-backs (bribes) from the US-based attorneys before they could give them letters showing they had the permission of Ni­geria to handle the matter.

Although President Mu­hammadu Buhari and Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (rtd) gave Abacha a clean bill in Kano on 8th June, 2008, after the re­membrance prayers marking 10 years of Abacha’s death, the issue of the Abacha loot bobbled up again because Nigeria is press­ing the US to repatriate the loot.

The current economic re­cession and lean oil revenue, which forced President Buha­ri to submit a request for exter­nal borrowing of $30 billion to finance critical infrastructure, have thrown up the matter of the looted funds once again.

 According to the court re­cord which was obtained by The AUTHORITY, the money was laundered using nine US-based banks.

The banks include ANZ Banking Group, New York; Bankers Trust Company, New York; Barclays Bank, New York; Citibank NA, New York; Chase Manhattan Bank, New York; Chemical Bank, New York; Commerzbank AG, New York; Marine Midland Bank, New York (now HSBC USA, NA, and Morgan Guaranty Trust Compa­ny, New York (now JP Morgan Chase).

According to the findings of the District of Columbia court, “the action in rem to forfeit the assets was an international con­spiracy to launder proceeds of corruption in Nigeria during the military regime of General Sani Abacha.


“Gen. Abacha, his son, Mo­hammed Sani Abacha; their as­sociate, Abubakar Atiku Bagudu, and others embezzled, misap­propriated, defrauded and ex­torted hundreds of millions of dollars from the government of Nigeria and others, including the proceeds of those crimes through conduct in and affect­ing the United States.

“The defendants in rem are subject to forfeiture as proper­ty involved in money laundering offences in violation of US law.
“As alleged, in one scheme, Gen. Abacha together with oth­ers systematically embezzled public funds worth billions of dollars from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on the false pretence the funds were neces­sary for national security.

“In another scheme, they generated windfall financial transactions of over $282 mil­lion through a fraudulent debt buy-back and also extorted more than $11 million from a French company, through its Nigerian subsidiary, Dumez Nigeria Lim­ited, in connection with pay­ments relating to the Ajaokuta Steel Company contract”.

Explaining how the money was fleeced, the presiding jus­tice of the court stated that: “Pro­ceeds of the security votes fraud were transported into and out of the US in violation of the US law and pooled into bank accounts in London, where they were used to purchase hundreds of millions of dollars of US dollar-denominated Nigerian bonds.

“The bonds generated tens of millions of dollar interest paid through Citibank in New York and guaranteed by the US; in ef­fect, the conspirators lent money stolen from Nigeria back to Ni­geria with zero risk and at enor­mous profit.


“By 2007, the bonds were liq­uidated and the proceeds from the sale of the bonds, togeth­er with the proceeds of the debt buy-back fraud and the Dumez extortion, were deposited into different bank accounts using corporate entities registered in the British Virgin Islands, and other holding in the UK, France and Bailiwick of Jersey”.