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Wednesday, April 18, 2012

A TIP OF IBORI JAMES CORRUPTION AND HOW IT STARTED

A former London DIY store cashier who became governor of an oil-rich Nigerian state has been jailed for 13 years for fraud totalling nearly £50m ($77m).


* A house in Hampstead, north London, for £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
* A Mercedes Maybach for 407,000 euros that was shipped direct to his mansion in South Africa

After the hearing Sue Patten, head of the Crown Prosecution Service central fraud group, said it would bid to confiscate the assets Ibori had acquired his riches "at the expense of the some of the poorest people in the world".



International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell said: "James Ibori's sentence sends a strong and important message to those who seek to use Britain as a refuge for their crimes.

"Corruption is a cancer in developing countries and the coalition government has a zero tolerance approach to it."

On Monday, the BBC's Newsnight revealed an equity fund backed by the UK Department for International Development's private enterprise arm, CDC Group, was being investigated by Nigerian officials.

It uncovered claims suggesting CDC Group put $47.5m (£29.9m) in to the private fund, which invested in Nigerian companies allegedly linked to Ibori.

DfID said the allegations dated to 2009 and that CDC, which is overseen by Mr Mitchell, always carried out "full and thorough" checks before investing in a fund manager.

CDC had investigated the claims at the time, finding "no indication that British funding had been misused", it said.

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