n November 2020 when Stella Ogene retired from the judicial service of Delta State in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta region, she had headed the state’s Customary Court of Appeal for a record 21 years.
The executive governor of Delta state, Ifeanyi Okowa. [PHOTO CREDIT: Official Twitter handle of Mr Okowa]In 2009, Mrs Ogene decided to venture into the London property market. However, for a public officer, she had a challenge: scaling the UK due diligence checks about her source of funds. She also needed to blindside the Nigerian Code of Conduct Bureau from determining an undeclared asset or an asset not attributable to fair income in accordance with Nigeria’s law.
In helping Mrs Ogene to incorporate Assete Media Limited in Seychelles, Cook Worldwide hired Mayfair Trust Group Limited, a Mahe-Seychelles-based offshore service provider, the documents further revealed. The public records reviewed include UK Land Registry files to see how Nigerian serving and past public officers like Mrs Ogene, NPA acting chief Mohammed Bello-Koko, and former minister and serving senator Stella Oduah, among others, secretly invested in the London property market through shell companies. They continued to serve as directors of the shell companies even as public officers, thereby breaching Nigeria’s code of conduct law.
Even if Mrs Ogene were an ordinary shareholder as she claimed, she was constitutionally bound to declare the company as well as the assets she owns through the company to the CCB. That point was made clear to her. As we understand, anonymous acquisition of the London property would ensure she circumvented due diligence checks in the UK about the sources of her funds as a public officer in Nigeria. Also, anonymity, that is, hiding behind her secret Seychelles-incorporated company, meant she could avoid possible investigation and prosecution in Nigeria for owning undeclared assets or acquiring as a judge any assets not attributable to legitimate income.
That's why the courts can't fight the system....
Pandora paper is unclothing the masquerades of corruption in Nigeria
We all know that the law is for the poor. ..