A new global investigation has exposed the offshore hideaways of some of the world’s most powerful personalities including powerful figures in Nigeria.
The project reveals how some of the most influential Nigerians including: a former Chief Justice of Nigeria, current and former state governors, past and present lawmakers, businesspeople, a popular pastor and many others – set up shell companies, and sometimes warehouse huge financial assets, in notorious secrecy jurisdictions.
Large numbers of public officials and mega-wealthy individuals use the offshore system to manage, move and, often, hide their wealth. They play by different rules from the rest of humanity, in a game of intrigue and privilege that fuels crime and corruption and entrenches the power of the world’s economic and political elites.
In the course of the investigation in Nigeria, more than 30 stories with damning details revealed the secret offshore assets of many prominent Nigerians.
It is not illegal for Nigerians who are not public officers to own offshore accounts, and many prominent businesses do have them. However, some public officials found to have accounts did not disclose them as expected by law.
The investigations revealed the secret offshore assets of Senate President Bukola Saraki and his wife Toyin, as well as those of Mr Saraki’s predecessor, David Mark.
It further revealed how the late governor of Bayelsa State, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, began looting his state and hiding public funds in offshore structures and how a former governor of Delta State, James Ibori, organised the stealing of the oil-rich state’s fund via offshore companies.
The investigations also revealed a network of shell companies in offshore tax havens linked to Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, and his brother, Sayyu Dantata, as well as the offshore companies of Wale Tinubu, the Chief Executive of Nigeria’s biggest indigenous oil company, Oando Plc, among others.
Similarly, the stories exposed the secret offshore company of one of Africa’s most influential televangelists, Temitope Joshua, popularly called T.B Joshua, who died in June.
Other prominent Nigerians named in the investigations were former Minister of Defence and billionaire businessman, Theophilus Danjuma; Businessman, Hakeem Bello Osaigie, Globacom CEO, Mike Adenuga, Governor Abubakar Sadiq Sani Bello of Niger State, the late Ooni of Ife, Okunade Sijuwade; former Arik Air Chairman, Joseph Arumemi-Johnson and his wife, Mary, as well as two then-serving senators – Andy Uba (Anambra) and Ibrahim Gobir (Sokoto).
Other top business persons, politicians, and their family members were also found in the infamous database, including those who were then holding public offices.
The revelations already sparked outrage across Nigeria, with activists, civil society organisations, the labour movement and the general public calling for extensive probes of those mentioned. But none of the violators has so far been prosecuted or sanctioned.
Elsewhere in Africa, the paper also listed Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta and his mother as beneficiaries of a secretive foundation in Panama. The leaked document also that three of Kenyatta’s siblings own five offshore companies with assets worth more than $30 million.
The project, known as Pandora Papers, is facilitated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) around the world, which obtained a trove of 11.9 million confidential files. The reporting, involves more than 600 journalists from 150 news organisations around the world.
The journalists spent two years studying and sorting files, contextualising information, tracking down sources and analysing public records and other documents.
Meanwhile, the Pandora Papers investigation is larger and more global than even ICIJ’s landmark Panama Papers investigation, which rocked the world in 2016, spawning police raids and new laws in dozens of countries and the fall of prime ministers in Iceland and Pakistan.
READ ALSO: Pandora Papers: Huge Data Leak Reveals Financial Secrets of World Leaders- ICIJ
