A global investigation has shown how Abubakar Atiku Bagudu, the governor of Kebbi State in North-East Nigeria, assisted the Sani Abacha dynasty in stealing from Nigeria in the 1990s.

The Pandora Papers investigation uncovered financial secrets, including those of politicians, former and serving public officials, known and suspected kleptocrats amassing illicit wealth, and was led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which includes more than 600 journalists and about 150 news organizations from around the world.

The Pandora Papers project is the largest collaborative global investigation in journalistic history, with 11.9 million leaked records sorted through by journalists over the course of two years.

The records were stolen from 14 offshore services firms throughout the world that assist clients in forming shell corporations and creating opaque structures to hide their financial activity.

Bagudu, then a senator, sent a delegation to Singapore in 2010 in search of a new haven to hide his shady assets, which are the subject of continuing forfeiture actions by the US Department of Justice.

Bagudu’s delegation, which included his brother Ibrahim Bagudu and London lawyer Ben Davies of Byrne and Partners, which is now a part of PCB Byrne, met with Asiaciti officials and expressed their desire for a new structure of secrecy to oil the flow of his dirty wealth for the benefit of himself and his family.

According to investigators, the offshore riches are part of billions of Dollars Mr Bagudu assisted the Sani Abacha dynasty in stealing from Nigeria in the 1990s.

Mr Bagudu was referred to Asiaciti Trust by Farrer and Co., a prominent centuries-old London legal firm that represents the British royal family. Asiaciti Trust is known for helping customers hide behind opaque offshore trusts to launder illicit money across borders.

Asiaciti was fined $1 million and a hundred thousand dollars by the Singapore Monetary Authority (MAS) in July 2020 for “serious breaches” of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) legislation between 2007 and 2018.

Bagudu has long been suspected of being a key figure in the Abacha plot to steal and launder billions of dollars from Nigeria. But it’s never been apparent how he put up intricate secrecy structures to hide stolen money, or the role of his enablers, including famous British legal firms and the Serious Organised Crimes Agency (SOCA), the predecessor of the National Crime Agency (NCA).

Mr Bagudu was assisted by Asiaciti in establishing a multi layered organization with roots in at least three countries: Singapore, the Cook Islands, and the United Kingdom. Mr Bagudu’s brother, Ibrahim, and an Asiaciti nominee are directors of Blue Holdings Trust, which was registered in Cooks Island as a “purpose trust” to “wholly” hold a Singapore-incorporated private trust company, Blue PTC Pte Ltd.

Blue PTC Pte Ltd is the trustee of two family trusts: the Blue Family Trust (1) and the Blue Family Trust (2). (2).

FHIC, Blue Holdings (1) Pte Limited, and Blue Holdings (2) Pte Limited, respectively, are the Singapore family-owned investment holding companies under each trust.

Waverton Investment Management, formerly JO Hambro Investment Management, and James Hambro and Partners, both based in London, have accounts for each FHIC. According to court filings filed in the United States, assets held by the two firms have been frozen.
America has been at the forefront of assisting Nigeria in recovering the Abacha loot, claiming that hundreds of millions of dollars were stolen and laundered through American banks.

Mr Bagudu, his wife, seven children, and his brother, Ibrahim, were the beneficiaries of each family trust and the accompanying London-based investments.

“According to the minutes of some meetings we reviewed, a sum of 99 million euros was transferred from Ridley to the investment accounts in London via the Blue PTC in Singapore in September 2010 and distributed as follows:

Waverton – seven million euros; James Hambro got ten million euros. Blue Holdings (1) (17,007,016 euros): Waverton – seven million euros; James Hambro – ten million euros. Waverton 23 million euros; James Hambro58,841,163 euros, according to Blue Holdings (2) (81,841,163 euros),” the collaborator said.

Between 1998, when Sanni Abacha, the military head of state, died suddenly, and 2020, the Abacha family and their most prolific man Friday, Bagudu, are said to have recovered 3.6 billion dollars.

Bagudu was intimately involved in the recovery of 163 million US dollars from Jersey in 2003, after which he negotiated a settlement with the US and Jersey to return the monies to Nigeria in exchange for Jersey withdrawing an extradition request and his free return to Nigeria.

Bagudu was held in a federal prison in Houston, Texas, for six months while awaiting extradition to Jersey.

The $163 million was returned as part of a bargain to avoid extradition.

Mr Bagudu also laundered the most recent recovery – 308 million dollars from Jersey in 2020.

According to U.S. court documents and incorporation filings from the Pandora Pap, Mr Bagudu was involved with all of the offshore front companies and bank accounts – from the British Virgin Islands to Ireland, Switzerland, England, Guernsey, and Jersey – used to steal and launder billions of dollars belonging to Nigeria under the Abacha regime as a director, signatory on accounts, or prime beneficiary.

According to court filings, American investigators argued that the criminal network employed deceptive techniques to make dirty money while laundering stolen assets through the United States.

One was alleged “security vote fraud,” in which Mr. Abacha, his National Security Adviser Ismaila Gwarzo, and others were accused of stealing more than two billion dollars by “fraudulently and falsely declaring that the monies would be used for national security purposes.”
They are accused of making over 60 fraudulent claims of “security situations” between 1994 and 1998 in order to withdraw large sums of money from the Central Bank of Nigeria, which was then led by Paul Ogumah.

The stolen money was transferred out of Nigeria and placed into accounts controlled by General Abacha’s allies, including Mohammed Abacha and Mr Bagudu, rather than being used for national security reasons, the court in Washington, D.C. was told.

Bribery and a dramatic conspiracy involving Mr Abacha’s son, Mohammed, and Mr Bagudu to lend money stolen from Nigeria back to Nigeria “with zero risks and at an enormous profit” by using proceeds from the security vote fraud to purchase hundreds of millions of dollars in US dollar-denominated Nigerian bonds, known as Nigerian Par Bonds, NPBs.

The conspirators are also accused of defrauding Nigeria of more than 282 million dollars by convincing the government to repurchase Nigeria’s debt from one of their firms for more than double the price Nigeria would have paid on the free market.

According to American investigators, the Par bonds and the debt-buy-back scheme were used to pay Mr Bagudu’s Ridley’s account at Credit Agricole Indosuez in London, which received 90 million dollars in 1998.

Between the creation of the Blue structure in 2010 and the freezing of its assets in 2014, Mr Bagudu’s children’s schooling and the “generous” lifestyle his family “was accustomed to” received 4.6 million dollars or 6.8 million euros.

One hundred thousand dollars was given to his brother Ibrahim as an annuity, and another three million dollars was deposited to Ibrahim’s bank account for “investment in real estate and property development in Abuja.”

A breakdown of disbursements revealed that Mr Bagudu was urged to pay out $100,000 for his “son’s school tuition” days after Farrer & Co’s Ms Davidson assisted him in pressuring Asiaciti.

Documents showed that, in addition to the part played by British corporations in the Bagudu antics, the British public service institution was also implicated.

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