President Muhammadu Buhari scandalised the OPL 245 transaction between Malabu Oil & Gas Ltd, Shell and Eni because he had a personal agenda, Mohammed Bello Adoke, former attorney-general of the federation (AGF), has alleged in a new tell-all book to be unveiled in Abuja on Thursday, as reported by TheCable.
According to TheCable, the book, titled ‘OPL 245: The Inside Story of the $1.3bn Nigerian Oil Block’, was published by The Conrad Press Ltd in the United Kingdom.
Adoke also accused former Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, Abubakar Malami, former AGF…CONTINUE READING
Some lawyers as well as some local and foreign NGOs of pursuing personal interests in the long-running court cases which started in 2015 after President Goodluck Jonathan left office.
Oil Prospecting Lease No 245 was awarded to Malabu in 1998 by the Sani Abacha regime but it became a subject of global corruption investigations, criminal prosecution and civil cases across the world after the Nigerian company sold its entire interest for $1.1 billion to Shell and Eni in 2011. The oil companies also paid $210 million as signature bonus to the federation.
Local and international NGOs alleged that the $1.1 billion paid to Malabu was a concealed bribe to Nigerian politicians who facilitated the transaction.
Buhari filed criminal charges against Adoke, who was the attorney-general when the oil block was bought by Shell and Eni.
Italian prosecutors also charged Shell, Eni, Dan Etete, the former Nigerian petroleum minister who fronted the Malabu deal, and other officials to court in Milan, while Nigeria sought $1.7 billion compensation from JP Morgan Bank in the UK over the transfer of proceeds from the sale of OPL 245.
However, the courts in Italy, the UK and Nigeria concluded that there was no evidence of corruption and no proof that Nigeria was short-changed in the deal, while US department of justice, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Dutch authorities dropped their investigations after finding nothing incriminating.
Adoke was discharged and acquitted in the related charges filed before two federal high courts in Abuja.
‘THE GRAND CONSPIRACY’
In the new book, which he said he published in order to bring the saga to a closure after being arrested, detained and charged to court by the Buhari administration and vindicated by the courts home and abroad, Adoke wrote: “Everyone had personal agenda.”
The former minister of justice said: “There were those fighting for ‘Mohammed Sani’ (Abacha) to get a cut from the Malabu windfall. They were not really interested in whether or not Nigeria was cheated in the OPL 245 deal as long as the Abachas would be compensated. There were those fighting to benefit from fees and commission if Nigeria successfully won legal claims against Shell and Eni. There were those fighting to win more trophies and more grants for exposing ‘the biggest corporate bribery scandal in history’. It was a cruel coalition of gold diggers, glory hunters and avengers.”
He alleged that at the very top, “President Buhari wanted to exact a pound of flesh for my failure to help ‘Mohammed Sani’ get a share of the payments to Malabu. His second-in-command, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, wanted to prove to his boss that he was a genius who could use litigation to make Shell and Eni cough out billions of dollars as compensation to Nigeria over the
‘corrupt’ OPL 245 deal.
“Osinbajo, who was the de facto Attorney-General of the Federation in the first six months of the Buhari Administration, set
up and chaired the Presidential Committee on Asset Recovery (PCAR) with a reported revenue target of over US$5.5bn. He could not trust anyone else to lead the mission.
“Down the food chain was Osinbajo’s lawyer friend, Olabode Johnson, whose firm and partners were targeting a commission of between 5% and 35% from the expected recovery.
“Also firmly in the food chain was Mr. Abubakar Malami, who was appointed Attorney-General by Buhari in November 2015. He had a natural agenda: he was one of the lawyers who worked for ‘Mohammed Sani’ on the Malabu dispute in the early 2000s. He had enough incentive to make the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation available to rubbish me. He had not just Buhari, his principal, to please but also had Abacha, his client and friend, to help.
“I don’t know where to place the local and international anti-corruption campaigners, led by UK-based Global Witness, on the ladder, but I know they were hunting for a trophy to showcase to their funders that they were working hard for the money. They initially did not pin anything on me: they were more interested in how a former minister of petroleum
got an oil block. But they upgraded their agenda along the way. What they did to me amounted to an abuse of platform and privilege: they galvanized their global networks to promote a false, narrow, shallow and libelous narrative against me, dodging the truth and embellishing the facts to arrive at their predetermined destination.
“Global Witness and their comrades in arms enlisted Mr. Fabio De Pasquale, Italian prosecutor and petty bully, to take up the OPL 245 case and prosecute the oil companies and their executives in the Court of Milan. His own agenda was hidden in plain sight: he had been laboring all his life to bring down the former Italian Prime Minister, the late Silvio Berlusconi, who had links to Eni. He did not think twice when Global Witness recruited him to do the dirty job on OPL 245.”
‘HATCHED IN ABUJA’
Adoke wrote that the “grand conspiracy” against him was hatched in Abuja in 2015.
“According to what I was told several years later by insiders who I cannot name for confidentiality reasons, De Pasquale and other Italian prosecutors came to Nigeria in the third quarter of 2015 to hold a series of meetings with government officials. They met with Osinbajo, the late Mr. Abba Kyari, Chief of Staff to the President, and EFCC officials. De Pasquale gave them assurances that he had enough evidence to nail the oil companies and individuals involved in the OPL 245 deal, but he needed Nigeria to do its part in making things easy for the prosecution,” he wrote.
“Although everybody’s agenda was different, there was a common goal: to criminalize the Resolution Agreements. The core strategy was to assail the integrity of the entire OPL 245 transaction between Malabu, Shell and Eni, starting with the Resolution Agreements which provided the foundation for the deal. Charges had to be filed against me to help the looming international corruption trial in Italy. The prosecutors would then be able to argue at the trial that the deal was a product of corruption and that the Attorney-General who issued the legal advice on its execution had been charged with fraud, money laundering and abuse of office.
“The operation would be choreographed and coordinated by the EFCC, in conjunction with anti-corruption campaigners and the media – both local and international. As I was further told by Presidency insiders, De Pasquale said Nigeria should apply to be joined as an injured party in the Italian trial. It was also decided that the government would file separate proceedings against JP Morgan Chase Bank in the U.K. and claim compensation of US$1.7bn for its ‘negligence’ in ‘illegally’ transferring US$801m to Malabu from the US$1.3bn paid by Shell and Eni.
“In addition to the US$1.7bn claim against JP Morgan, Nigeria was to file a civil case against Shell and Eni in the U.K to claim back the $1.1bn paid for the benefit of Malabu. I still don’t know how the Osinbajo-led PCAR arrived at the figure of ‘recovering’ US$5.5bn through litigation. It was all fantasy, but freedom of dreaming is a fundamental human right.
“Ultimately, everything would depend on how well the government was able to criminalize the Resolution Agreements. To flesh out the De Pasquale-inspired scheme, a strategy session was held by top government officials at the Presidential Villa in November 2015. They set out a multipronged strategy: the EFCC would take care of the criminalization; HEDA Resource Centre, a Nigerian NGO working in partnership with Global Witness, would handle the ‘advocacy’; [and the online media] would execute the character assassination.”
The book presentation will be televised live on Channels TV from 11am on Thursday
