Monday, December 9, 2013
Paper to Polymer, Polymer to Paper they stil don't get it
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UK Court Hands Goldman Sachs Banker four years in Jail for helping Ibori launder loot
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A British court has sentenced Ellias Preko, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker who helped former Governor James Ibori of Delta State to launder millions of dollars, to four and a half years in jail.
Mr. Preko, 54, is originally from Ghana.
It was reported that Mr. Preko remained impassive as Judge Anthony Pitts announced his sentence. Earlier, the disgraced banker had thanked the judge as he was taken into custody following guilty verdicts returned by the jury on two counts of money laundering.
“His world has very much fallen apart,” defense barrister Richard Horwell told the court in a plea for leniency before sentence was passed.
Mr. Preko was arrested five years ago as the net closed in around former Delta State governor, James Ibori. Mr. Ibori himself was last year sentenced to 13 years imprisonment by the same judge after he plead guilty to charges of money laundering.
The jury heard evidence that between 2000 and 2003, Mr. Preko took $5 million stolen by Ibori, his wife and mistress, and made it appear to be clean money so that the loot could be lodged in trusts held in the British tax haven of Guernsey.
The cash came from inflated contracts awarded by Mr. Ibori’s administration to three companies held in the names of Ibori’s wife and mistress.
Email evidence seen by the jury showed that Mr. Preko instructed the Iboris on how to fill out forms for businesses so that they could pass the Guernsey bank’s due diligence investigations.
With the benefit of Mr. Preko’s expert help, the rogue companies, named Sagicom, Zircon, Zeta and Onyx, appeared to be legitimate. But investigations by the Metropolitan Police revealed that the address of the companies’ head office was in fact an off-license on Awolowo Road, Lagos, prosecutor Sasha Wass told the court.
The money laundering scheme was the “first of many” future transactions Mr. Ibori promised to execute in email correspondence shown to the jury.
Mr. Preko’s defense team had argued that their client had never been paid for his help, and said the banker was unaware that the money was the proceeds of crime. The other members of the fraud syndicate, Mr. Ibori, his family and mistress as well as Mr. Ibori’s UK solicitor, Bhadresh Gohil, bore much more responsibility for the criminal activity, Mr. Horwell argued before Judge Pitts and the jury.
“Mr Preko was toward the bottom of the hierarchy,” the defendant’s attorney argued. But that line of defense was mostly swept away and discountenanced by the judge.
“You were a professional man, not under the pressures of a family member,” said Judge Pitts to Mr. Preko, adding that the defendant “had the ability to walk away.”
Judge Pitts however acknowledged that Mr. Preko had a limited role in the theft in comparison to Ibori’s wife, Theresa Ibori, and his mistress, Udoamaka Okoronkwo. Both women were each sentenced to five years in 2009. They have finished serving their sentence and been released.
Confiscation hearings are due to be held next year, where any of Mr. Preko’s ill-gotten gains identified by investigators will be liable to seizure by the court.
The court granted the prosecution four months to complete fresh investigations in Nigeria regarding the location and nature of illicitly acquired assets.
Students disappointed as ESUT postpones examination
Enugu – The second semester examination of the Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT), could not hold on Monday due to the absence of lecturers.
The university had announced the commencement of the examination on Dec. 2 following Federal Government’s directive for the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to resume work.
The Enugu Campus that students were in the lecture halls waiting for question papers.
But this was not to be as they waited endlessly for a directive from the school when none of the lecturers turned up.
The Dean of the Faculty of Management and Social Sciences, Prof Joseph Aneke, said the lecturers were waiting for instruction from ASUU to resume work.
“There is no instruction from ASUU for academic activities to resume. That is why the examination could not start today.
“Due to the strike, academic activities have been postponed indefinitely until the strike is called off.
“It is a pity that students have to go, while their examinations which were supposed to start today have been postponed”, Aneke said.
Some of the students who spoke expressed disappointment over the situation.
Edozie Chukwu, 200 level student of Insurance, said he was disappointed that the examination did not hold after travelling all the way from Lagos.
“We are fed up with this whole thing. We read for this examination only to be told that it has been cancelled.
“The university’s authority could have informed us in time that the examination would not hold as scheduled”, he said.
Chukwu urged the Federal Government and ASUU to resolve the impasse and save the students from the embarrassment and risk of travelling.
A final year student of Accountancy, Chidi Ogbodo, said his future was uncertain if the strike continued and appealed to the lecturers to return to classes in the interest of the students.
“I came to school by 8a.m. today in anticipation of starting my degree examination, yet nothing happened. I have almost lost an academic year’’, he added. The federal government had directed ASUU to resume academic activities on Dec. 9. (NAN)
100 world leaders in South Africa for Mandela funeral
JOHANNESBURG (AFP) – South Africa struggled Monday to meet the unprecedented logistical challenge of hosting close to 100 world leaders flying in from every corner of the globe for the state funeral of freedom icon Nelson Mandela.
“The world literally is coming to South Africa,” said the government’s head of public diplomacy, Clayson Monyela.
“I don’t think it has ever happened before,” Monyela said of the wave of 91 leaders, including US President Barack Obama, bearing down on the country. http://dvsl3w2q45hb8.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/mandela.jpg
Nelson Mandela
Many will join the 80,000 people expected to cram Tuesday into the FNB stadium in Soweto to take part in a grand memorial service for their inspirational first black president.
Reflecting the depth and breadth of Mandela’s popularity, the event will see political foes Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro share the same stage in paying tribute to one of the towering political figures of the 20th century.
South African President Jacob Zuma will make the keynote address, and other speakers will include UN Secretary Ban Ki-Moon and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.
Four of Mandela’s adored grandchildren will speak for his family, while neither his widow, Graca Machel, nor his ex-wife Winne Madikizela-Mandela are listed on the programme.
The memorial service, in the venue where Mandela made his last major public appearance for the 2010 World Cup final, is seen as a final chance for grieving South Africans to unite in a mass celebration of his life ahead of the more formal state funeral.
Some 120,000 people will be able to watch the event on giant screens set up in three overflow stadiums in Johannesburg.
‘You are never prepared enough’
Although Mandela had been critically ill for months, the announcement of his death on Thursday night still rocked a country that had looked to his unassailable moral authority as a comforting constant in a time of uncertain social and economic change.
“I don’t think you are ever prepared enough,” said Zelda la Grange, who was Mandela’s long-time personal assistant both during and after his presidency.
“We had prepared ourselves emotionally but still we are overcome by this feeling of loss and sadness,” La Grange said.
A single candle was lit in Mandela’s tiny prison cell on Robben Island, where he spent the harshest of his 27 years in apartheid jails, before emerging to lead his country out of the shadow of apartheid into a multi-racial democracy.
The week-long observances will culminate Sunday in Mandela’s burial at a family plot in his boyhood home of Qunu in the Eastern Cape.
The government has sought to dissuade A-list dignitaries from attending, citing Qunu’s rural location, the lack of amenities and limited space.
Ahead of the burial, Mandela’s body will lie in state for three days from Wednesday in the amphitheatre of the Union Buildings in Pretoria where he was sworn in as president in 1994.
Each morning, his coffin will be borne through the streets of the capital in a funeral cortege, to give as many people as possible the chance to pay their final respects.
11,000 troops mobilised
Around 11,000 troops have been mobilised to ensure security and help with crowd control.
Despite the sudden influx of international dignitaries and the compressed preparation time, National Police spokesman Solomon Makgale insisted that the security apparatus could cope.
“Having so many heads of state is not a security headache for us. We’ve learned over the years,” Makgale said, adding that they would be “working closely” with the foreign leaders’ own security details.
As well as Obama and three previous occupants of the White House, British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande and Afghan President Hamid Karzai were all on the guest list.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who was among the first to arrive, visited the Nelson Mandela Foundation in Johannesburg where he paid handsome tribute to a “giant for justice” whose “mighty life” touched millions.
Parliament met in special session Monday, with MPs carrying single red roses as they entered the assembly building that was flanked by giant portraits of Mandela in tribal dress and as an elder statesman.
Opposition leader Helen Zille said every politician had a duty to carry forward Mandela’s ideals of justice and equality for all.
“He has handed the baton to us and we dare not drop it,” Zille said.
Africa will be represented at the funeral by Nigeria’s Goodluck Jonathan and more than a dozen other heads of state and government.
Notable absentees include Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who cited high travel and security costs, and Mandela’s fellow Nobel peace laureate, the Dalai Lama, who since 2009 has twice been denied a visa for South Africa.
PDP crisis: Jonathan summons Tukur, NWC members to an emergency meeting
ABUJA- PRESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan Monday night summoned the national Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur and other members of the National Working Committee, NWC to an emergency meeting at the Presidential villa, Abuja.
Vanguard gathered that the
................................................................... meeting which also had in attendance the Chairman, Board of Trustees, BoT of PDP, Chief Tony Anenih was called to brainstorm on the outcome of Sunday meeting of PDP governors and the subsequent one the President had with the governors as well as some members of the G5 who dumped the PDP for All Progressives Congress, APC.
The president on Sunday held a meeting with the PDP governors alongside the Governor of Sokoto state, Aliyu Wamakko and Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano State who dumped PDP for APC
More details soon
Corruption: Tambuwal blasts FG, EFCC
ABUJA – The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, Monday, accused the Executive arm of government in Nigeria of paying lip service to the fight against corruption, even as he decried what he termed “the culture of undue secrecy surrounding the operation of government” in the country.
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Tambuwal, who was the guest speaker at the 2013 International anti-corruption day organized by the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, in Abuja, also alleged that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, was very corrupt, saying the anti-graft body never accounted for huge sums of money it received from donor agencies.
“Let us start with the anti-corruption agencies themselves. I am happy that EFCC is here because they are also corrupt. Let us start by asking them what happens to grants they receive from donor agencies which are neither budgeted nor accounted for? That is corruption.
*Tambuwal
“This is why we have asked the House Committee of EFCC to look into some of these issues and report to the House.
“EFCC said it has started implementing the report on probe of the fuel subsidy regime. Let me say it here today that what EFCC said it is implementing is not the House report which exposed the enormous fraud in the system, but the one by Mr. Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede. We have done our job, go and do yours.
“What has happened to all the exposed corruption cases? The Pension scam, recent and obvious fraud in the Aviation sector, that of the Security and Exchange Commission, SEC, where trillions of Naira from private investors were suspected to have been mismanaged. When we commenced investigation into the matter, what became of paramount importance to the EFCC was allegation that one of our members collected money as estacode to travel but failed to do so.
“Our members were immediately rushed to court for prosecution, meanwhile, the top government officer that was found culpable in the main fraud for which the National Assembly called for public hearing, nothing has happened to her till date.
“I cannot hear or read anywhere that she was invited by the EFCC or that any member of SEC was even invited. We at the National Assembly, for the sake of probity and accountability, agreed that budgetary allocation to the Commission should be suspended, only for us to hear that the Executive found a leeway of funding the agency. We are currently investigating that.
“Coming to what happened in the Aviation industry recently, do we need an angel to report to EFCC that something happened there? No we don’t! We all belong to this country so people should stop taking us for granted,” he added.
Aside calling on the Presidency to eschew the habit of constituting committees to probe manifest acts of corruption involving highly placed public officers, the Speaker, noted that the Federal Executive Council, FEC, “which is not even known to the law, should not be used as a forum for approving and clearing contracts.”
He said: “When I raised this issue earlier, some people started attacking my personality, accusing me of confronting the office of the President. However, I still maintain that the provision of the law which requires the Bureau of Public Procurement, BPP, to set up a council should be respected. The process of award or review of contracts should not be a one man affair. We know that Mr Eze cannot do it alone.
“On our part, we have the desire to support the anti-corruption agencies in terms of funding, but then, our friends from the other side of government always feel that immediately they bring their budget we should quickly rubber stamp it for them to go. Yet they do not implement the budget even when it is passed. They have not even met up to 40/59% implementation till this December.
“Fight against corruption should be personalized by every Nigerian. All of us, individually and collectively have a role to play. It is my opinion that it is indeed needless for the Executive to constitute probe committees to look into allegations of corruption, especially in the public sector.
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