A New York judge has granted Nigeria’s request to subpoena
10 banks in the US regarding access to account statements of some of Nigeria’s
former top public officeholders, Law360 reports.
In September 2019, a UK court awarded $9.6 billion against
Nigeria in favour of Process and Industrial Developments Ltd (P&ID).
In a bid to overturn the $9.6 billion arbitration award, asreported by Bloomberg, the federal government filed an application before the
US court seeking permission to subpoena information on transactions involving
top government officials, including former President Goodluck Jonathan and his
wife, Patience; former ministers of petroleum, Diezani Alison-Madueke and
Rilwanu Lukman.
But the former president had said he has no foreign bank
accounts.
According to Abubakar Malami, attorney-general of the
federation, “there is good reason to believe that ministers at the highest
level were involved in a corrupt scheme to steal money from Nigeria”.
He said P&ID had no ability or intention of ever
performing the contract, which required the company to build a gas processing
plant and the government to supply gas.
He said P&ID paid kickbacks to government officials so
that they could overlook the company’s lack of technical capabilities in
executing the contract which was never started.
Ruling on the application on Thursday, Lorna Schofield, the
judge, held that Nigeria’s request met the standards of the law.
But the court rejected Nigeria’s request to conceal its
findings from P&ID.
The judge ordered that Nigeria must grant P&ID access to
the documents received from the subpoena.
The banks involved are: Citibank, N.A. (Citibank), Allied
Irish Banks plc (Allied Irish), HSBC Bank USA (HSBC), Standard New York, Inc.
(Standard New York), Deutsche Bank Trust Co. Americas (Deutsche Bank), J.P.
Morgan Chase (JPMorgan), United Bank for Africa (UBA), Bank of Cyprus, Fortis
Private Banking Singapore Limited (Fortis), and Standard Chartered
International (USA) Ltd. (Standard Chartered).
The Nigerian government said the 10 banks are “likely to
have processed US dollar transactions connected to P&ID’s operations as
either correspondent banks or the New York branches of foreign lenders”.
P&ID’s spokesperson described the request for a subpoena
as “a desperate attempt to substantiate Nigeria’s spurious allegations of
fraud”.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is
prosecuting James Nolan, Adam Quinn (at large), and two firms in which they are
said to be directors – Goidel Resources Limited, and ICIL Limited on 32 counts
of fraud — linked to the P&ID case.
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