Though he had admitted in court to fraud covering nearly GBP50 million, but the judge characterized as it as ludicrously low.
“Perhaps that (GBP50 million) is a ludicrously low figure and the figure may be in excess of GBP200 million, it is difficult to tell,” Judge Anthony Pitts told Southwark crown court in London on Tuesday as he handed former governor of Delta state, Chief James Ibori 13 years imprisonment. “The confiscation proceedings may shed some further light on the enormity of the sums involved,” the judge added.
The former governor of Delta State in Nigeria pleaded guilty in February to 10 counts relating to conspiracy to launder funds from the state he governed, and other charges.
Ibori, who was governor of Delta State from 1999 to 2007, was born in Nigeria but moved to the U.K. in the 1980s, where he married and lived in a suburb of London. He worked as a cashier at a hardware store, where the prosecutor, Sasha Wass, said he was a “petty thief with his hand in the till.” Ibori and his wife were convicted in 1991 for stealing goods from the store.
He moved back to Nigeria to work for the notoriously corrupt regime of President Sani Abacha, working his way up the ranks of the ruling party to eventually run for governor and win in 1999.
The Metropolitan Police estimates Ibori siphoned off as much as $250 million in state assets. Among the things Ibori bought with the stolen funds were a mansion in London’s Hampstead neighborhood, a mansion on the U.K. coast, a mansion in South Africa, a fleet of armored Range Rovers valued at about GBP600,000, as well as a Bentley and a Mercedes Maybach.
The U.K. Metropolitan Police Service’s Proceeds of Corruption Unit had been investigating Ibori since 2005, working alongside Nigeria’s anti-graft agency. Ibori was its first case.

The U.K. unit, funded by the Department for International Development, is tasked with investigating politically exposed people, or PEPs, who seek to launder stolen assets from their own countries in the U.K.
“Ibori’s sentence sends a strong and important message to those who seek to use Britain as a refuge for their crimes,” said Andrew Mitchell, the international development secretary, in a statement.
Six people, including Ibori’s wife and a London lawyer, have either been convicted or pleaded guilty to charges relating to Ibori. More than GBP8.5 million has been confiscated thus far from the others tried in the case. A London court froze about GBP35 million of Ibori’s assets in 2007. A major breakthrough in the case happened when officers found hard drives at the central London offices of Bhadresh Gohil, the London-based lawyer.
As the two-day sentencing hearing went on, activists called for investigations of the banks that held the embezzled state money. Global Witness called for an investigation into HSBC Holdings PLC, Barclays PLC, Citigroup Inc. and Abbey National, now owned by Santander UK PLC for their role in the Ibori case.
Wass said Monday at the sentencing hearing that Ibori and others connected to him held multiple accounts at the institutions.
“By doing business with Ibori and his associates, these banks facilitated his corrupt behavior and allowed him to spend diverted state assets on a luxury lifestyle, including a private jet and expensive London houses, while many Nigerians continue to live in poverty,” said Robert Palmer, a campaigner with Global Witness, in a statement.
The U.K. Financial Services Authority said it would take a tougher approach to banks following a review of banks’ anti-money laundering compliance last June that found widespread failures across the sector. In March, the FSA fined Coutts, the private bank of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, GBP8.75 million for money-laundering controls failures.
Representatives from Santander and Citigroup declined to comment. A person representing Barclays couldn’t be reached. Robert Sherman, a spokesman for HSBC, said the bank is “acutely aware” of its responsibility toward politically-exposed people.
“We take compliance very seriously and are committed to ensuring robust anti-money laundering and politically exposed persons policies and procedures,” Sherman said in an email


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