Ibori released from UK prison but re-arrested to face fresh charges relating to his assets

FORMER Delta State governor Chief James Ibori has been released from prison in the UK but has been rearrested by the police and faces a fresh trial for another set of charges relating to his array of assets in the country.

 

In April 2012, Chief Ibori was jailed 13 years in April 2012 by a Southwark Crown Court after admitting to 13 charges of money laundering and embezzlement. Initially sent to Long Lartin Prison in Worcestershire, he was later transferred to Her Majesty’s Prison in Bedford, from where he was released after serving less than four years.

 

However, Chief Ibori is not yet free to return to Nigeria as he was immediately re-arrested to face another charge, which borders on the confiscation of his ill-gotten assets. His court case on the matter initially billed for May, will now come up in June, so he is being held on remand until then.

 

Chief Ibori, 57, was jailed for using UK financial institutions to launder hundreds of millions of pound sterling he stole from public funds in Delta State. He had earlier made a mockery of Nigeria’s legal system, walking away free from the multi-billion fraud charge levelled against him by the Economic and Financial crimes Commission (EFCC), including offering a $15m bribe to its chairman.

Also jailed with Chief Ibori, apart from his sister and mistress, were his wife, Theresa Nkoyo Ibori, his lawyer, Bhadresh Gohil and his financial advisors, Daniel McCann and Lambertus De Boer. He was the Delta State governor from 1999 and held office for eight years until 2007.

 

Chief Ibori’s case and extradition became one of the longest, most complex and expensive operations mounted by Scotland Yard in recent years. Prosecutors alleged that companies owned by Chief Ibori and his family were beneficiaries from the sale of state assets, including shares in Econet, a GSM telephone operator, as well as crude oil deliveries.

Before his conviction, UK juries had found Chief Ibori’s sister Christine Ibie-Ibori and his mistress, Udoamaka Okoronkwo, guilty on counts of money laundering. Among possessions confiscated from Chief Ibori were a house in Hampstead in north London, worth £2.2m, a property in Shaftesbury, Dorset for £311,000, a £3.2m mansion in Sandton, near Johannesburg South Africa, a fleet of armoured Range Rovers valued at £600,000, a £120,000 Bentley Continental GT and a Mercedes-Benz Maybach bought for €407,000 cash.

After the sentencing hearing, Sue Patten, head of the Crown Prosecution Service central fraud group, said it would bid to confiscate the assets Chief Ibori had acquired at the expense of the some of the poorest people in the world. After his university education in Nigeria, Chief Ibori moved to the United Kingdom, where he worked at Wickes DIY, married his wife, Theresa and tainted his record with two convictions for theft and credit card fraud.