The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission filed a suit yesterday in the federal high court charging former petroleum minister Dan Etete, former justice minister Mohammed Bello Adoke and businessman Aliyu Abubakar with fraud and money laundering of hundreds of millions of dollars in the sale of the bloc. The money came from a Nigerian escrow account at the London branch of JPMorgan Chase, according to the court document.
Separately, Nigeria's legislature is investigating why the state got so little of the proceeds of a deal brokered by Bello Adoke in 2011 to resolve an ownership dispute involving British-Dutch oil multinational Shell, Italian Eni, Etete's Malabu Oil, Abubakar's Rocky Top Resources and Nigeria's state oil company.
Earlier this year, Italian prosecutors raided the headquarters of Shell in The Hague and Eni in Milan. Global Witness, the corruption watchdog that has long pursued the case, said that "Shell and Eni have always denied knowledge of the corruption at the heart of this deal...Exposed their investors to massive risks and have been tainted by this theft from Nigerian citizens."
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In a statement, Bello Adoke emphasised that he did not benefit from the deal, which he said saved the government from a breach of contract suit in which Shell was claiming USD 2 billion. He called the charges "orchestrated plans to bring me to public disrepute in order to satisfy the whims and caprices of some powerful interests on (a) revenge mission."
Malabu Oil paid USD 20 million for OPL 245 in 1998 under a contract awarded by Etete, who was then petroleum minister in the regime of military dictator Sani Abacha. The bloc is said to hold 9 billion barrels of crude and an unquantifiable amount of natural gas.
Ten years later, to end a protracted legal battle preventing exploration of Nigeria's most valuable oil bloc, Bello Adoke, then justice minister and attorney general, brokered a deal by which Shell and Eni paid USD 1.1 billion to Malabu and USD 210 million to Nigeria for an exploration license.