Chief James Onanefe Ibori’s Media Office was shocked to read in the newspapers of Wednesday January 27, 2016, that the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, Mr. Abubakar Malami, said the Federal Government was priming itself to recover the sum of 6.9m British Pounds Sterling described as “Ibori loot”.In a press statement, Mr. Tony Eluemunr, Ibori’s Media Assistant said ‘’there is no Ibori loot anywhere in the world. Such money, whether in British pounds, American dollars or the Nigerian Naira just does not exist. This is because the Ibori London trial is not yet over. It is an incontrovertible fact that the confiscation hearing has not started at all, and remains months away into the future. This makes it disappointing that a high official of State such as the Attorney-General may have been misled into believing that an Ibori loot not only exists anywhere, but he even put a figure (6.9 million pounds) to it.
Mr. Eluemunor continued: “With all due respect to the
Minister and the President Muhammadu Buhari administration, it is curious that
such a misleading statement could have come less than a week that dozens of
well-respected foreign media organisations including the British Broadcasting
Corporation (BBC), The Times of London, The Guardian of London, and a host of Nigerian news outlets reported
that the case against Ibori and his associates have become shaky as some
operatives of the London Metropolitan Police have been accused of bribery and
corruption in the course of their investigations. Thus at the Thursday January
21, 2016 hearing the prosecution was forced to withdraw its case against one of
Ibori’s counsels, Mr. Bradesh Gohil. It had charged Gohil of leaking fabricated
documents to media organisations and Members of (British) Parliament, but Gohil
turned the case against the Police, accusing it of misleading the court with
tainted evidence from corrupt operatives and of withholding key documents which
could have proved police corruption.
The New Indian Express of Monday 25 January 2016 ventured
further than the Times to report that Gohil, who was freed from jail last year,
may now challenge his previous conviction, just as Ibori or any of his
associates already convicted may also decide to do.
In representations to the judge, Stephen Kamlish, Gohil's
defence team leader accused the Crown Prosecution Service of "positively
misleading the court and the parties as part of their deliberate cover-up of
discloseable material".
In response, the Judge said, "The crown has offered no
evidence for one or both of the following reasons. One, that the allegations of
corruption made by Mr Gohil are true, and not false. The second is that the
crown has suppressed material both in this court and in other proceedings,
including the trial of Ibori”. Then he said in words that must be sweet music
to Ibori’s ears; “The crown offering no evidence can only mean the crown is not
prepared themselves to explain their decision, either for the abuse of the
court in bad faith or for the police corruption. In those circumstances, it is
our duty to our client to raise these matters and this brings into question the
safety of these (past) convictions."
This means all the past convictions could be challenged afresh.
The New Indian Express continued; “A Met police intelligence
report seen by the paper suggests an RISC employee telephoned a police officer
working on the Ibori investigation in 2007 and allegedly told him his inquiries
were "on the right track". Separate documents shown to Gohil's
defence team are said to reveal the existence of 19 cash deposits into the same
officer's bank account. The Crown Prosecution had allegedly denied the
existence of the documents”. However, it is on record that in the run up to the
hearings, Ms Wass was directly accused by Gohil’s representative, Mr. Stephen
Kamlish, of lying to the Court of Appeal and also lying to His Honour at the
Southwark Court and disobeying his order for the Crown to disclose evidence in
their possession which include the bank statements of Detective Constable John
McDonald to the Defence before the start of the trial.
Eluemunor said that he assumed that the Minister may have
been misquoted and so did not issue a rebuttal immediately. It was only when he
failed to retract the statement after 24 hours that he decided to give
Nigerians (including the Minister) the true perspective about the Ibori London
trial and state categorically that the so called “Ibori Loot” Mr. Abubakar
Malami saw as a “low hanging fruit ripe for plucking” must have been a terrible
mirage. This has done nothing though to affect in any way the high regards
Chief Ibori and his Media Office have for President Muhammadu Buhari, his
administration and Ministers, including the Justice Minister, Mr. Abubakar
Malami. Chief Ibori wishes them well in
their stated bid to leave Nigeria better than they found it.
Signed: Tony
Eluemunor
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