Ibori owns 30 per cent of Oando – Swiss Bank document reveals

Contrary to the claim by oil and gas company, Oando Plc, that former
governor of Delta State, James Ibori, owns "insignificant" shares in
the company, British prosecutors, Tuesday, provided overwhelming
evidence that the convicted money launderer owns almost a third of the
company.
A crown prosecutor told a British Crown Court in Southwark, London,
that Mr. Ibori told a Swiss private bank in 2004 that he owns up to 30
per cent of Oando.
Mr. Ibori is believed to have laundered more than N12.5 billion (£50
million) stolen from the treasury of oil-rich Delta State during his
tenure as governor. The case has been described as one of the biggest
embezzlement cases ever seen in Britain.
More details of how he hid his illicit wealth in a maze of shell
companies and offshore accounts are expected to be revealed in a the
three-week long asset confiscation hearing that started on Monday.
According to Ms. Wass, while opening an account at Swiss bank, PKB,
through a shell company called Stanhope Investment, Mr. Ibori told the
bank he owns 30 per cent of Oando.
Reading from internal PKB documents, Ms. Wass said the former governor
passed himself as the owner of an insurance company and 50 per cent
owner of a Nigerian Bank.
She also revealed that N180 million ($1.2 million) was transferred
from Oando in three instalments into Mr. Ibori's account in PKB. She
said the money was subsequently transferred into a fund meant to
purchase a N3 billion ($20 million) private jet for Mr Ibori.
Oando, Nigeria's biggest indigenous oil company, issued a statement
Monday denying that some of Mr. Ibori's wealth was hidden in the
company.
"Based on our current shareholding register, Mr Ibori's shareholding
stands at 443 shares out of a total issued and paid-up share capital
of 6.8 billion ordinary shares, which is clearly insignificant, and
cannot be considered as a large part of Oando," the firm said.
Oando shares dipped 10 per cent at the shock market, on Tuesday after
news of Mr. Ibori's involvement with the company broke.
Money like the Kennedys
Internal document shows that Mr. Ibori awed officials of PKB with his
enormous stolen wealth so much that the bank likened him to a
descendant of the Kennedys in the U.S. The bank described Mr. Ibori as
being from a wealthy Nigerian family with decades old wealth gained
from investment in the petroleum sector.
"We could compare these families with the Kennedy dynasty which also
mixed business and politics," the bank document said.
Another part of the document also described him as "an extremely rich
man as he was doing a lot of business before becoming governor"
0recent evidence has shown that Mr. Ibori started out as a career
petty thief who stole building materials in Nigeria and shoplifted in
cohort with his now convicted wife in the U.K.