Saharareporters has obtained new US court documents that provide fresh clues into the criminal past of former Governor James Onafefe Ibori of Delta State. Saharareporters was first to unearth details of Ibori’s conviction in England on shoplifting and larceny charges. His wife, Theresa Nakanda Ibori, was also convicted along with him in England.

The latest court documents -UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: v.$1,09,000.40 in U.S.CURRENCY -from the US establish that Ibori was engaged in serious criminal activities in the days of General Sani Abacha, the late dictator who unleashed a reign of terror and mindless looting in Nigeria.

The recently obtained documents pertain to an asset forfeiture settlement between Ibori and the United States Secret Service in the US District Court in Maryland. The case stemmed from numerous wire transfers of substantial sums of cash into Ibori’s accounts with Citibank. The funds were wired from accounts in Switzerland.

A US justice department source who recently became familiar with the case told Saharareporters that the documents unraveled a pattern of money laundering and patronage that Ibori enjoyed during the Abacha regime. However, at the time of forfeiture of the assets, the US authorities thought the monies were proceeds from 419 activities, instead of pay-offs for Ibori’s dastardly work for the Abacha regime.

A retired colonel told our correspondent that Ibori “provided a wide variety of services to the Abacha regime. The services included espionage on pro-democracy activists and the murder of the regime’s real or perceived enemies.” The source said that the assassination of Mr. Alfred Rewane, a financier and backer of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), was “Ibori’s most notable hit.” Mr. Rewane was killed in 1995 at his home in GRA Ikeja, a suburb of Lagos. The source also stated that Ibori participated in the killing of General Shehu Musa Yar’adua (rtd). The late Yar’adua was reportedly injected with the blood of a member of Abacha’s dreaded Strike Force/BG member who died of AIDS shortly after returning from training in Libya and Ibori sacrificed his newspaper editor, Niran Malaolu to one of Ababcha's phantom coup trials that earned him life imprisonment until Abacha died.

The US district court documents suggest that Ibori was reaping the reward of his membership of Abacha’s killer squad after he met Hamza Al Mustapha, Abacha’s Chief Security Officer.

In an “affidavit in support of arrest in rem” sworn to by USSS agent, Eddie L. Coulter, it was revealed that Ibori began receiving huge sums of money into a Citibank account he opened in the last quarter of 1994, when Abacha began recruiting civilian assassins to serve his regime. The affidavit discloses that the big sum that triggered the forfeiture proceedings took place in 1996 when the sum of $1.5 million was wired to Ibori’s Citibank account. In court papers obtained by Saharareporters, US investigators laid out a case that Ibori’s stunning deposits were the proceeds of some 419 activities. They revealed that, prior to making the amazing transfers, Ibori and his wife, Theresa Nakanda, lived in England in assisted public housing. Both Ibori and his wife were receiving public assistance at the time that the inexplicable money transfers started flowing into his CitiBank accounts.

Caught in the crosshairs of American law enforcement, Ibori wangled documents with the help of the Abacha regime claiming that the monies came from legitimate sources. In court documents, he claimed part of the deposits came from payments from a debt collection he undertook for a company that was owed huge sums of money by the ministry of petroleum resources as well as Nigeria's minsitry of finance.

Our investigation showed that the Abacha regime went out of its way to assist Ibori in building a deceptive case that the astonishing deposits came from legitimate business dealings. Despite those false declarations, US court documents show that American investigators forced Ibori to forfeit part of the deposits as a penalty.

Ibori’s suspicious use of different dates to obtain driver’s licenses in Maryland and later Virginia drew the attention of the US secret service. 

When shown the asset forfeiture papers, two Nigerian security sources, including a member of the Special Investigation Panel (SIP) that once interrogated Ibori over mysterious Abacha-era assassinations, told Saharareporters that the court documents were the missing link in their inquiry, which eventually nabbed Al Mustapha, Ibori’s close business associate during the Abacha years.

Nigerian security agents, serving and retired, who spoke to us indicated that the security agencies were well aware of Ibori’s extensive participation in the tight-knit network of the Abacha regime’s hideous security apparatus that was responsible for a series of assassinations, disappearances and the frame-up of notable pro-democracy activists in Nigeria between 1993 and 1998. Abacha was working to transmute from a dictator to an “elected” president when he died suddenly in 1998 in mysterious circumstances.

Col. Ibrahim Yakassai, a military doctor who helped inject Shehu Musa Yar’adua (the elder brother of current Nigeria ruler, Umaru Yar’adua) with the AIDS-contaminated blood of a dead BG member, told the Special Investigation Panel (SIP) that investigated Abacha-era killings and corruption that a good deal of monies stolen in the name of “security votes” went to Ibori who maintained strong business dealings with Al Mustapha. Col. (Dr.) Yakassai was the head of the murderous special force known as the “BG”.

In the words of one of our highly knowledgeable security sources, “Colonel Yakassai did confess to the SIP that some of the money the General Abdulsalami Abubakar regime accused him of embezzling was given to Ibori to finance The Diet newspaper which was co-owned by Ibori and Major Hamza Mustapha.”

Saharareporters checks shows that Diet newspaper was registered on October 10 1996 as “Diet Communications Limited”. Ibori and Hadi Hamza, a brother of Al Mustapha’s, were listed as the major shareholders in the company whose registration number with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) was 301608. Hadi Hamza represented the interests of Abacha’s chief security aide.
A member of the SIP gave Saharareporters a chilling account of the way Abacha’s team of assassins “exterminated General Yar’adua.” According to him, “Major Hamza Al Mustapha, James Ibori and Ibrahim Yakassai met in Abuja on the orders of General Abacha to find a final solution to Shehu Yar’adua’s intransigence. After the team met, they opted to send a special operations team to Port Harcourt. The team was led by Hamza Mustapha. General Shehu Yar’adua was then transported from his Enugu prison to a guesthouse in Port Harcourt where he was injected with a concoction.”

The source said the fluid contained the contaminated blood of a Strike Force BG trainee who fell ill in Libya and was rushed home to the State House Clinic in Abuja where he died of AIDS. The dead operative’s blood was drawn and flown on a presidential jet to Port Harcourt with the team that went to kill Yar’adua. The elder Yar’adua died a few weeks later.

Several security sources told Saharareporters that the Yar’adua family was responsible for blocking public disclosure of the way the general was finished off. “Because of the AIDS angle to (the general’s) death, his family, including President Yar’adua, stopped further prosecution of the case,” said one source. “They considered the cause of his death too embarrassing to be revealed to the public. Another source told Saharareporters that “President” Yar’adua was working quietly to, “very shortly,” arrange the release of Hamza Mustapha. Al Mustapha has been standing trial in Lagos for his role in the attempted assassination of Mr. Alex Ibru, publisher of the Guardian stable of newspapers. The court handling the former CSO’s case is being pressured to quietly use a technicality to set Abacha’s hit man free.

A top politician familiar with the internal intrigues within the Yar’adua family told Saharareporters that Ibori’s closeness to Umaru Yar’adua indicated “the often hidden depths of Umaru’s hatred for his elder brother.” The source said Yar’adua was clearly aware of Ibori’s role in the team that ended his brother’s life.

In another interesting twist, Yar’adua’s wife, Turai, is “an extremely close friend of Miriam Abacha,” the late dictator’s widow. Miriam Abacha was conspicuously present at the wedding of “President” Yar’adua’s daughter to Governor Isah Yuguda of Bauchi. By contrast, Binta Yar’adua, wife of the late general, was not seen at the wedding. Our source said that Shehu Yar’adua’s family has limited access to his younger brother’s regime and family.

One of Ibori’s longstanding friends told Saharareporters that the former Delta governor “is a survivalist who knows how to cozy up to family members of those he helped to deal with.” As earlier reported by Saharareporters, Ibori established a curious friendship with Ebisan Rewane, the son of Pa Rewane. He lavishly enriched the younger Rewane, nominating him as a member of some of his shadow companies.

Sources within the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as well as agents of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission told Saharareporters that Ibori invested close to N16 billion in Umaru Yar’adua’s presidential campaigns in 2006/2007.

Ibori, whose official birth date is 1958, claimed that he was born on two different dates in 1962, according to an affidavit by the special US agent who investigated his cash deposits. The affidavit is reproduced below:

read the rest of the report on http://saharareporters.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3136:new-us-district-court-documents-detail-james-iboris-criminal-ties-to-the-abacha-regime&catid=42:exclusive&Itemid=160

The more I hear and read shocking reports like this, the more I fear fro my country. This is because it goes on to show that the people holding on to power will want to stay there perpetually and while I do believe that having the right people in the right places will move my country forward, the question I always try to answer is, will this cabal allow the right people get there?? Na God Hand we dey!