Ibori Replies Attorney-General: "There Is No Ibori Loot Anywhere"

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
Media Assistant to Chief James Onanefe Ibori.