Business Maverick: Mega-consulate ties US to convicted billionaire in Nigeria

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By placing its $537 million consulate on Gilbert Chagoury’s Eko Atlantic development, the US government became the anchor tenant for a project run by a man who was once convicted of laundering money for a Nigerian dictator and who’s admitted to making ...

On March 31, billionaire Gilbert Chagoury stood atop the plot of land he’d dredged from the sea around Lagos, beaming in the sweltering heat alongside U.S. Consul-General to Nigeria Claire Pierangelo, as they broke ground for America’s largest consulate in the world.

“We did not have input into that process, or we would have flagged that,” Matthew Page, the State Department’s lead intelligence analyst on Nigeria from 2012 to 2015, said by phone from Boston on April 11, referring to the U.S. decision to locate its mega-consulate on Chagoury real estate. “Either the U.S.

“It gives people hope that there is a future in Eko Atlantic City because of who the tenant is,” said Yinka Omoniyi, associate partner at property consultancy Knight Frank in Lagos. “All of a sudden out of nowhere, the Americans are relocating their consulate to that site.” A Swiss court convicted Chagoury in 2000 of laundering some of the funds Abacha had siphoned away, according to a relatedseen by Bloomberg. He agreed to pay a fine of about 1 million Swiss francs and handed back $66 million to the Nigerian government, the decision said. Chagoury’s Swiss attorney, Luc Argand, told a PBS Frontline investigation published in 2010 that his client’s Swiss conviction was expunged two years after finalizing the plea deal.

The former president spoke at a dedication ceremony for Eko Atlantic in February 2013, just weeks after Hillary Clinton’s term as Secretary of State ended. The State Department said an international real estate firm identified Eko Atlantic as one of a number of potential sites for the consulate in 2012. The U.S.

 

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Belgique Dernières Nouvelles, Belgique Actualités