Millions Spent To Nail Ex Gov James Ibori -BBC

                              
Barely three days after my story entitled “Exposed: How the UK Conspired to convict Ibori, Gohil, others – Govt’s Role, “appeared in the Weekend Vanguard of 28 January 2017, the BBC on 1st February 2017 confirmed one of the most damning disclosures there.


My expose showed how the British Government, acting through the DfID, had been in contention with Chief James Onanefe Ibori over the control of V-Mobile shares. I gave this back grounding: “At the centre of this conspiracy is the British government’s aid agency – the Department for International Development (DfID). To the world, it provides British monetary support for humanitarian aid and projects in impoverished counties. Yet, as its role in the Ibori case shows, its agenda is however political. In the Ibori case/s, the British government used these aid funds as a political tool against Ibori and to support its political agenda and undermine Nigerian sovereignty”.

Then I dropped the bombshell: “To begin at the beginning; It will be recalled that since 2005, DFID funded the entirety of the Ibori, Gohil and linked prosecutions; with £16 million going to “The Proceeds of Corruption Unit.” 
This week Wednesday, Mr. Mark Easton, BBC’s Home editor, published “James Ibori: Nigerian ex-governor challenges UK conviction” He wrote: “In 2005 the Department for International Development funded a special police unit inside Scotland Yard to go after corrupt African politicians.
 Its prime target was Ibori. Its aim: to get him into a British court and convict him for corruption. The UK government spent years and millions getting Ibori out of Nigeria and into a British court in one of the most expensive and complex police investigations undertaken”.
And showing that the hunters have become the hunted as the Ibori case has turned against the Police, the BBC report added: “Last year, after repeatedly telling judges there was no evidence of police corruption, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) admitted they had found substantial material that supported the allegations.

There exists intelligence that supports the assertion that [a police officer] received payment in return for information in respect of the Ibori case,” the CPS admitted. The officer in question has always denied taking bribes and internal police investigations have previously exonerated him. Details of how Scotland Yard tapped phones and conducted covert surveillance on a number of officers in the unit investigating Ibori emerged for the first time”

 Unfortunately for DfID, it did little to cover its tracks. Once Ibori was arraigned, it never bothered to arraign any other politically exposed person. Also, the claim that the special Police Unit it funded lavishly with £16 million was for African-wide operation was a ruse; it has not cast an eye at any other country apart from Nigeria or at any other person. 
Yet, the BBC report repeated the lies the media had heaped on Ibori owing to media manipulation, calculated disinformation and misinformation. Mr. Easton’s report claimed: “Ibori was believed to have laundered large sums in the UK, just part of hundreds of millions of dollars it was claimed he had embezzled from the Nigerian people

On a state salary of just £4,000 a year he had bought a fleet of luxury cars and expensive properties. He was also looking to buy a private jet”. This nonsense that a governor’s salary was Ibori’s only source of income from 1999 to 2007 has been at the heart of the Ibori London and Asaba trials. And that has been the most crucial media manipulation and court-misleading both the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) and the British Police and Prosecution did against Ibori.

The British Police and Prosecution both knew that Ibori had other sources of income, such as an oil service company called MER Engineering but chose to mislead both the court and the public. Page 14 of the 44-page charges filed by the London Metropolitan Police, against Ibori in court, item 81, on MER Engineering states: “MER built houseboats, which were rented out to oil workers in the Delta. It was Ibori who was able to influence the contracts with Chevron and Shell and the NNPC”, Item 83: “It was MER money that paid for the Ibori property in Hampstead, Westover Hill: Count 5. Item 84, “It was MER money that paid for the house Ibori bought in Houston Texas. Item 85, “it was MER money that paid for the deposit for the $20 million Challenger Jet airplane that Mr. Ibori was in the process of buying when his monies were restrained by the UK courts”.

Yet, weeks before Ibori was sentenced, EFCC arrested and questioned one Dr. Babalakin on the charge that he helped Ibori launder money, using the account of Babalakin’s company. EFCC said Ibori never tried to buy a Challenger jet but was only helped to launder money by pretending he was buying a jet. I replied that the EFCC was lying because it had known for years that Ibori actually invested some money in a registered air-charter company for a jet that would be used commercially, but the world has been deceived that Ibori had bought, or was in the process of buying, a private jet. And didn’t Prosecution state in court that Ibori had invested only $4million on that on that aircraft – money from MER Engineering?

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