$1.6b Fraud: EFCC Arrests Vaswani Brothers Again
By Alexandra Mede Snr Correspondent, Abuja

Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on Friday in Lagos arrested two of the Vaswani brothers for duping a man to the tune of $1.6 billion.

The brothers, who were only recently, in trouble with the anti-corruption commission for allegedly defrauding Globe Motors of N40 billion, are back in the EFCC net for allegedly defrauding one Rotimi Sawyer.

According to a reliable EFCC source, the business the brothers had with their victim involved intellectual property.

The source revealed that the two brothers, Suril and Haresh Vaswani, made a deal with Sawyer over his literary work and had actually remitted a part of the royalties to him but reneged on the full payment.

"They reneged on the deal and refused to pay Rotimi Sawyer the balance of $1.6 billion which was due him," the source stated.

Disclosing that the arrest of the two Vaswani brothers followed a petition forwarded to the chairman of the anti-graft commission by the victim, the EFCC source added that they were arrested for obtaining money from the petitioner by false pretence.

When Sunday Independent contacted the Head of Media and Publicity at the EFCC, Femi Babafemi, he confirmed the arrest in Lagos , declining further comment however.

http://www.independentngonline.com/news/tfpg/article03

"Check out this pending case against the Vaswani Brothers"

Vaswani Brothers in Trouble Again
Written by Dike Onwuamaeze   
Sunday, 04 January 2009


Barely one year after they were pardoned and allowed back into Nigeria, the Vaswani Brothers – Sunil, Haresh and Mahesh – have allegedly run foul of the country’s laws again. Consequently, The Honda Place, as their auto shops are called, in Lagos, Kano, Abuja and Port Harcourt, has been closed down by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC. The Honda Place is a subsidiary of the Stallion Group. The trio are directors of the conglomerate. Also, the anti-graft agency said it has launched a manhunt for the trio. Femi Babafemi, EFCC’s spokesman confirmed the commission’s sealing of the premises. “It is true that we sealed off The Honda Place in Lagos and we have launched a manhunt for the three Vaswani brothers. We got a petition against them and investigation is still in progress,” he said.

The commission claimed that it took the action because the Vaswanis refused to appear before it to answer to charges of fraud brought against them by their erstwhile business partners. On December 24, the EFCC asked the group to submit its finances for scrutiny. A request it promptly complied with.

The commission also requested that the three directors of the Stallion Group should report to its head office for questioning over a Four billion Naira fraud perpetrated by THP, located on Akin Adesola Street, Victoria Island, Lagos. Same day, the agency pasted a seal that read “Under Investigation” on the offices. However, it finally closed it down on December 31.

A source said that the brothers were involved in several controversial financial dealings in Nigeria. “They are alleged to have forged documents with which they defrauded Globe Motors in a deal they were involved in,” the source said.

One of the questions while the controversy over the deal festered last week was over the whereabouts of the Vaswani brothers. Where were they? Newswatch investigation revealed that the Vaswani brothers were unable to personally answer the EFCC’s summons because they were all out of the country on holiday. Viskas Kaine, spokesperson of the Stallion Group, said the directors of the company were on Christmas holiday in different parts of Asia and Europe and could not have been able to organise to travel back to Nigeria within a very short time frame. “Our directors have absolutely no reason to ‘run’ or ‘flee’ anywhere,” The Honda Place said in a recent press statement on its face-off with the EFCC.

Globe Motors has been at loggerheads with the firm over unsatisfactory business dealings. Several cases between the two companies are pending in courts while some have been resolved. The crux of their quarrel is an agreement between Globe and THP dated 1993 on how to import and market Honda vehicles in Nigeria.

In a petition it sent to the EFCC on May 8, 2008, Globe Motors claimed that THP obtained the sum of N40 billion by false pretence from it. Falana and Falana Chambers filed the petition on behalf of Globe Motors. The petitioners traced the disagreement to 1992 when the Honda Motors of Japan imposed a stiff condition for any firm intending to be its sole franchise holder in Nigeria. The condition stipulated that the dealer must clear the backlog meant for Nigeria and build a standard Honda workshop in the country. Fulfilling these conditions, according to the petitioners, meant that the dealer would incur at least N200 million losses as at 1992.

Falana and Falana Chambers said in the petition: “It was difficult for any single motor company in Nigeria to meet the above condition in order to take up the sole dealership. As a result, The Honda Place approached our client and represented to our client that they will give them a sub-dealership that will enable them to be importing 45 percent of Honda vehicles earmarked for Nigeria by Honda Motors, Japan if our client would enable Honda Place to succeed as sole dealer by sharing the backlog burden with them. Our client agreed and went ahead to clear the 50 percent of the said backlog and Honda Place was made the sole dealer in 1993.”

However, soon after they have received the sole dealership for the Nigerian market, the Vaswani brothers started devising a way that would enable them to renege their obligations to Globe Motors. “In their quest to render the representation they made to our client ineffective, Sunil Vaswani, Mahesh Vaswani, Haresh Vaswani, Mrs Rita Vaswani, Gopal Kritshina and other principal agents of Honda Place alleged that the Honda dealership had been given to another company, THP Limited and that Honda Place was incapable of giving Globe Motors 45 percent.”

The Vaswanis were accused of forging a dealership agreement between THP Limited and Honda Japan to get Globe Motors to believe the falsehood. THP was accused of blotting out the month of the year the agreement was signed between it and Honda Japan.

The police report on the investigation it carried on the agreement between THP and Honda Japan confirmed the forgery. “Examination of the document mentioned above carried out with the aid of video spectral comparator and other apparatus revealed evidence of alteration by means of correction fluid. But a look at the back of the concealed portion clearly revealed the word April. It is my opinion therefore that what was originally in the questioned portion was 1st of April 1995,” E. Kolawale, a forensic document examiner, said in the police report.   

But the falsehood was betrayed by the fact that Sunil who signed the agreement between Globe and Honda Place also signed the one between Honda Japan and THP Limited, which is an abbreviation of The Honda Place. “In the light of the foregoing, you will agree with us that the Vaswani brothers fraudulently lured our client into footing the financial responsibility of the 50 percent backlog which availed them the sole dealership with Honda Japan. Thereafter, they falsified the said dealership agreement in order to properly exonerate themselves from liability,” Falana wrote. He then pleaded: “It will be appreciated if you can use your good offices to compel the Vaswani brothers to pay to our client the sum of N40 billion that was obtained by false pretences.”

In a release issued on December 31, THP said that the only investigation it was aware of stemmed from the petition by Globe Motors, which it has responded to through its lawyers. It further claimed that the issues placed before the commission had been determined by the Supreme Court and was still pending at the Lagos State High Court.

THP categorically claimed that it possessed the exclusive rights to distribute and render after sales service for all brands of Honda cars in Nigeria. “We do not have any subsisting contractual relationship with Globe Motors or any other company with respect to the distribution of Honda cars. A sub-dealership agreement that was executed in favour of Globe Motors was terminated mutually upon the failure of Globe Motors to adhere with the rules and regulations approved in the sub-dealership agreement by the manufacturers. This termination was confirmed by the consent judgement of the High Court of Lagos State,” the company said.

THP pointed out that an attempt by Globe Motors to resuscitate the agreement was dismissed by the Supreme Court in a unanimous judgement it delivered on July 15, 2005. It described the petition on forgery or alteration to the EFCC by Globe Motors as baffling as similar allegations have been dismissed by an Abuja High Court and are also pending before the Lagos High Court. “We deny forging any document whatsoever or misleading Globe Motors Limited at any time. We have never received a kobo from Globe Motors towards the realisation of our rights of distributorship and we are not owing Globe Motors any sum whatsoever.” It said the allegation that THP failed to heed EFCC’s summons and answer Globe Motors petition as total surprise.

The current move is coming barely six years after the former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration deported the Vaswanis in May 2003 on charges of defrauding the government of tax revenue worth N40 billion. Obasanjo vowed in his Independence broadcast on October 2003 that they would never set foot in Nigeria in spite of their intentions to invest in the Nigerian economy. Then, there were similar threats to seal up the businesses of the Stallion Group. The EFCC also, in a bid to strangulate the group, instructed the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, to stop the allocation of foreign exchange to them. “This was a clear attempt to kill our businesses before the investigation would be completed and put 7,500 people out of work,” the Stallion Group said in a public statement it issued in response to the 2003 crackdown. The group described the allegation to defraud the government of N40 billion in 2003 as “wicked and totally untrue.”

The deportation of the Vaswanis in 2003 happened few weeks after the government had signed two separate approvals for the Stallion Group to invest $100 million and $300 million respectively in the establishment of a rice mill and the third largest cement-processing factory in the world in Nigeria. These could have reduced the prices of these commodities in the country.

In 2007, reprivee came their way as President Umaru Yar’Adua permitted the three men to return to Nigeria on October 12, 2007. “After a careful study of your case as presented, and, after appraisals and analysis of submissions by various relevant government agencies, and in the spirit of justice, fairness and observance of the rule of law, Mr President has approved the revocation of the deportation order that caused your deportation from Nigeria in May 2003,” Major General Abdullahi Mohammed, former chief of staff to the President, said in 2007.

Reported by Demola Abimboye

http://www.newswatchngr.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=468&Itemid=32

Na wa o

Why USA and other countries no dey pardon criminals after dem deport them?

Nigeria own different all in the name of money.You allowed criminals back into the country again.

I really dont understand our system

Dont know what to say again

i don't understand why they should have been pardoned in the first place.on top the money they make in Nigeria,they still find time to be involved in 419scams

maybe because of their connection with Abacha

_{when u got northern-monkies ans ododuwa in charge what do u expect}



www.nairaland.com/attachments/132829_IBBOBJYAR_jpg66b6d6334730e6cf34924338e91dec94

ikeyman00:

_{when u got northern-monkies ans ododuwa in charge what do u expect}

chill,dude.we should fight the lebanese slumbags and not ourselves

u see brother what those gays are doin in naija cant be allowed in china, chinese police will beat them down, but the question that remind is who allows them to do so? ehuh


funi when i see naija gals gettin reall high out there with them. both go de claimed western, mayi laugh no be small

do you mean 1.6billion or 1.6m dollars? 1.6billion dollars no be small bread.

When one says our leaders are the problem of Nigeria, many will say the leaders are not our problems. Now, look at this case.
Will you accept if I say that those Vaswani guys are more valuable to some of our leaders than you and I? Sad.

Hello Nairalander, The vaswani brothers that were arrested by EFCC are not the same vaswani brothers of Stallion Group (owner of Honda Place, Volkswagen, skoda motors and others). For your information, Authoritatively, none vaswani brothers of stallion group are presently in Nigeria not talking of arresting them. Those guys that ware arreseted by EFCC are Rajan and Koresh who belongs to another family but bear the same family name. Vaswani is a common india name like all the names we bear in Nigeria (Adekunle, Suleiman, Ugochukwu and the rest like that.).

We should and confirm our info before we started saying whatever we want to say.

seun_jub:

Hello Nairalander, The vaswani brothers that were arrested by EFCC are not the same vaswani brothers of Stallion Group (owner of Honda Place, Volkswagen, skoda motors and others). For your information, Authoritatively, none vaswani brothers of stallion group are presently in Nigeria not talking of arresting them. Those guys that ware arreseted by EFCC are Rajan and Koresh who belongs to another family but bear the same family name. Vaswani is a common india name like all the names we bear in Nigeria (Adekunle, Suleiman, Ugochukwu and the rest like that.).

We should and confirm our information before we started saying whatever we want to say.

i quoted my source above but i don't see yours so for the meantime,i DON'T BELIEVE YOU

aieromon:

chill,dude.we should fight the lebanese slumbags and not ourselves

how can you fight the lebanese slumbags when they clearly have the backing of the high and mighty?

Why is EFCC arresting these foreigners?

Surely Yaradua and Aondonkaa will soon release and pardon them as part of due process.

And Indians will turn around and call Nigerians criminals. I guess they don't see what their brothers are doing.

seun_jub:

Hello Nairalander, The vaswani brothers that were arrested by EFCC are not the same vaswani brothers of Stallion Group (owner of Honda Place, Volkswagen, skoda motors and others). For your information, Authoritatively, none vaswani brothers of stallion group are presently in Nigeria not talking of arresting them. Those guys that ware arreseted by EFCC are Rajan and Koresh who belongs to another family but bear the same family name. Vaswani is a common india name like all the names we bear in Nigeria (Adekunle, Suleiman, Ugochukwu and the rest like that.).

We should and confirm our information before we started saying whatever we want to say.

THIS IS VERY CORRECT , THERE ARE MORE THAN TWO OR EVEN THREE INFLUNTIAL VASWANI FAMILIES IN NIGERIA WHO ARE NOT RELATED--------AND THE ORIGINAL POSTER OF THIS THREAD IS GROSSLY MISINFORMED---MY OWN SOURCE IS THENATION NEWSPAPER SUNDAY 8 -3 -2009 SEUN JB IS RIGHT!!

Babangida is a very handsome man but then again so was lucifer

switch47:

THIS IS VERY CORRECT , THERE ARE MORE THAN TWO OR EVEN THREE INFLUNTIAL VASWANI FAMILIES IN NIGERIA WHO ARE NOT RELATED--------AND THE ORIGINAL POSTER OF THIS THREAD IS GROSSLY MISINFORMED---MY OWN SOURCE IS THENATION NEWSPAPER SUNDAY 8 -3 -2009 SEUN JB IS RIGHT!!

the issue should not be on the true identity of the Vaswanis but should be on the fact that these Lebanese ought to be punished regardless of whether they are related by blood.by the way,where did you get the directory of all the "influential" Vaswani families in Nigeria?

like i told the first poster,i need your story source or status quo,PERIOD

Vaswani Brothers should be jailed, no bail

she na yaradua wey de sleep on top presidential seat, na him you want make he depot then thieves.
before he considers that they don make all the money wey de wan make finish.

trust other countires like iran, libya hmm these bastard will die in prsion and still pay back that money

but with those mumu politician? are the human or nigerian? or evn african?

Those bastards should be smoked alifenbut NG government s**ks big time and will let them work away on a large bail, pffffffffff we will never learn .That money alone will solve our power problem and the power problem is keeping many peeps jobless and the so called average Nijirian can hardly feed

some times i ask my self one questio. why are we all leaving the country to another country whereby aliens are making it big in our country? Listen, globe motor and others must have defaulted one way or the other. perhaps he had wanted to be smart before he was out smarted, trust yoruba man. but then, the system of government in nigeria should be looked into at the peak

So EFCC is now a law court that settles cases?

Even Efcc s**ks

I think a 419 can only dupe a 419 cos a deal that will involve u is illegitimate. However, one could be in an opinion that the so called Rotimi Sawyer must have also been a greedy and scammer too, to have fallen to their trick (Vaswani's).
But those guys should be make face the law strictly cos U as foreigner can not try that in india and go alive,

Dear Nairalanders,

Please take your time to read this, we must start something, the government is not doing anything to this people, go to Matori around the Industrial Estate, Mushin/Ilupeju, just ask any of those our Nigerians about the condition of work there and you will be mavelled. A job I will never accept a 100K for a week, and these Indians will pay someone 10K or less to do; am not a richman o but we must do something; the Ghanian never did up to this in the 80s and they were asked to go, this Indians must go, I actualy meant those found to be fraudulent. Please take some time to read this news below.


Dirty Deals Of Asian Companies
The continued incursion of Asians into the country may not entirely be for the growth of the nation's economy, but for their shrewd business interests that see them assuming the status of slave masters over their Nigerian hosts

By Emma Maduabuchi

Snr Correspondent, Lagos


Shirish Tanksale is a talented medical practitioner. He is Indian-born and a naturalised citizen of Nigeria, who has practiced his profession for 26 years at Sango-Ota, a border town in Ogun State.

His was the gifted hand that built the Rubee Medical Centre from scratch in 1989, with the paltry sum of N100, 000, to the huge and modern 38 bed-hospital along Abeokuta Expressway, Sango-Ota, Ogun State.

The hospital boasts of modern equipments such as: Echocardiogram, ECG, X-ray, Well-equipped Operation Theatre, Intensive Care Unit (ICU), and Laboratory.

Tanksale ordinarily, because of his origin, education and medical talent, should be expected to be immune to the usual vicissitudes that afflict commonplace Nigerians. But he is not. Instead, according to him, he has tasted persecutions of many kinds, which would shock most Nigerians.

After he left Rubee to open a clinic of his own (Shirish Clinic) on July 3, 2008, located at 102 Joju Road, Sango-Ota, he got his first shock. On September 25, while at his Shirish Clinic, attending to patients and working to nurture the young clinic as he had done with the Rubee Medical Centre, men from the Special Fraud Unit (SFU) of the Nigerian Police at Alagbon Close, Milverton Road, Ikoyi visited. It was not an ordinary visit. They arrested Tanksale and Jyoti, his 50-year-old wife.

According to Tanksale, the police ransacked his house, apparently in search of incriminating evidence. This was because, in the understanding of Tanksale, Rajan Vaswani, his former boss at Rubee Medical Centre, a business mogul had laid accusations of stealing, embezzlement and fraud against him. Twice, the police came to ransack his house without any evidence of misdemeanor found.

While at the police station the Indian claimed to have been threatened and maltreated with mock executions practiced on Jyoti.

Vaswani, it was gathered, had done everything possible to chase Tanksale out of town without success. Vaswani, who, according to findings, many organisations and individuals have tried to mediate and appeal to, to sheath his sword, is said to be adamant. He is also said to be insisting that the Tanksale must move his residence and clinic away from his Sango-Ota base.

He did not stop at that. Vaswani requested as a condition for settlement that Tanksale also must not berth at some other Local Government Areas like Ado-Odo Ota, Ifo as well as Ipokia, all in Ogun State. Others are Ijaiye Ojokoro and Alimosho, both in Lagos State.

Tanksale's colleagues at Association of General and Private Medical Practitioners of Nigeria (AGPMPN) had also intervened at a point. They once wrote: "Our Association wishes to appeal to you to let Dr. Tanksale be. He is currently living on charity and soft loans from colleagues. Please spare him further misery. The Association is committed to staying by his side in his effort to rise from the ruins. You would have further endeared your organisation, including Rubee Hospital in particular, to the Association, if you cease hostilities."

On February 4, a foremost rights group, Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO), held a press conference on the matter. Chijioke Odom, CLO's head of campaigns claimed the conference was called to "bring to the knowledge of Nigerians on one hand, the unjustifiable degradation, unwarranted trauma, ordeal of losses and imminent threat to the life of a fellow Nigerian, Dr. Shirish Tanksale.

"On the other hand, it is to decry the undignified unilateral resort to impunity through the unlawful use of state powers and corporate interests, to initiate and sustain the criminalisation and harassment of Dr. Tanksale by Rajan Vaswani," Odom said.

However, Vaswani, who was contacted for his own side of the story, declined comment, insisting that a written statement put together by his lawyers, Ricky Tarfa & Co, and addressed to CLO would subsist on the matter.

In the statement, Vaswani claimed that the allegation of the threat to life by Tanksale and his family is baseless and fabricated to divert attention from the ongoing investigation by the Commissioner of Police (CP), which he said was against allegations of fraud, conversion, cheating and threat orchestrated and committed by Tanksale and his wife.

He further claimed as incorrect, Tanksale's claims that his account had not been settled up to date. In fact, as per the terms and conditions of the accounts, he presented the profitability and the accounts of the hospital for the year ended 1997, 1998 and 1999.

Incidentally, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) arrested Vaswani, together with his elder brother, Koresh, last week Friday, March 6.

The brothers, who also have been released from the EFCC's detention, allegedly duped a man, Rotimi Sawyer, to the tune of N1. 6 billion. Saturday Enquirer gathered that the Vaswanis' arrest had to do with intellectual property theft and is not connected with that of Tanksale case with them.

Indeed, Tanksale's case has its origin in 1989, when the Patriarch of the Vaswani family, Vasudev Vaswani, invited Tanksale and asked him to start the Rubee hospital, which he said was intended to cater for his conglomerates.

"His intension was really to help me because he took me like a son," said Tanksale.

Vasudev agreed with Tanksale, to a profit settlement of 75 per cent for the Vaswani's and 25 per cent for Tanksale. Unfortunately for Tanksale, Pa Vaswani passed on February 9, 2006. His death automatically placed the management of the hospital on Rajan's shoulders as he became the new managing director/chief executive officer (MD/CEO) of Rubee Medical Centre.

Trouble started for Tanksale when he requested his own part of the profits of the company, as well as when he planned running an Indian School at Ota to cater for the children of the Indian nationals within that neighbourhood. Out of frustration Tanksale resigned from the employment of the hospital on April 8, 2008.

Other reasons he adduced for resigning his appointment with the hospital were, according to him, refusal of the Vaswani companies to settle any of their bills from the hospital, which then stood at N53 million. Rajan, he further claimed, was in the habit of dipping his hand into the hospital coffers, making away with a princely sum of N250 million monthly without caring about his own part of the agreement with late Pa Vaswani.

Tanksale is a thorough bred medical practitioner, recognised as such by many of his colleagues who would not understand why he was going through hard times in the hands of a fellow Indian.

The story of Tanksale has not ceased to marvel anyone who had thought that inhuman treatment by Indian business people in the country was only reserved for Nigerians in their employ.

For instance, Vaswani's conglomerate, according to Saturday Enquirer's findings practices discriminatory tendencies that many describe as worse than the notorious brand South Africa once practised, in the country in the apartheid era.

Investigations also showed that the Vaswani conglomerates have no Nigerians at a senior staff cadre.

"No Nigerian in their employ enjoys the benefit of owning an official car. It is only expatriate workers that have this privilege," an anonymous Nigerian volunteered.

The conglomerate workers, who spoke to Saturday Enquirer but declined to have their names in print claimed the Indians generally have harsh and brash disposition to every black, and do not entertain any nonsense, especially from their Nigerian employees.

Unfortunately, when approached, the Vaswanis failed to clarify issues on these allegations.

Rajan, according to information available to Saturday Enquirer, once boasted that nobody in Nigeria could dare him in anyway. He was quoted as having said, in his local Indian language: "I have thousands of these black dogs working for me. I feed them; they can only bark, they cannot bite."

But, a director with one of the Vaswani's companies, who pleaded anonymity, vehemently denied the allegations against his boss, saying instead, "it was a deliberate attempt to malign Mr. Vaswani."

The refutal, notwithstanding, Nigerians, it seems, are not the only ones bearing this brunt of Asian harshness.

There is the allegation that, in order to extract maximum loyalty from fellow brothers, all Asian expatriate workers are made to deposit their passports and travel documents, so as to make it easy to deport anyone found misbehaving at will. This is particularly true of the Chinese.

It is on this count that Tanksale suspects Vaswani's hostility to him is hinged. He believes that because he has become a Nigerian citizen, the man distastes him as it is no longer easy for him to send him back to India with a snap of his fingers as he would others.

Interestingly, the harsh treatment to staff is not peculiar to Indian companies, but a feature that is often replicated to a great extent, among the other Asian companies in the country.

For instance, Oasis Bakery, a confectionery along Wempco Road at Ogba, Ikeja, Lagos State is a good example. The company is known to run a policy in which no Nigerian can hold sensitive position, but generally as support staff. The Chinese owners of the bakery are believed to be subjecting the Nigerian workers, before and after work each day's job to humiliating search because of their belief that Nigerians are not trustworthy.

"They easily put off the air-conditioners in their shop as a way of punishing the Nigerian staff. That usually worsens the hot condition of the shop because of the spillover of heat coming from its bakery," said an ex-staff of the company, who does not want to disclose her name to Saturday Enquirer.

Among the greatest disservice the Asian companies have been accused of in Nigeria is their poor remuneration package. WEMPCO, a conglomerate owned by the Chinese and has the street where it is located named after it, is believed to be operating also in this manner.

When Oasis Bakery was contacted, an official who refused to give his name, but is refered to as Master by the staff, feigned ability to speak or understand English, but asked one of his Nigerian workers to respond to the questions. He confirmed that security personnel receive N8, 000 monthly, and after a month of probation, get N8, 500. Other categories of workers receive N10, 000 monthly as their regular pay.

The workers, he said, resume work by 8 a.m. and close by 9 p.m. daily.

Asked whether he knew that to be against Labour laws, he claimed ignorance, insisting that he had never worked before. On public holidays, Oasis workers usually receive N1, 000 as bonus.

The interpreter confirmed the allegation of frisking workers before and after work on grounds that occasionally, the workers had been discovered to pilfer one or two products. Under such circumstance the cost of such products recovered were often deducted from the worker's salary at the end of the month.

At WEMPCO, the company in the business of manufacturing baking flour, animal feed, and several other goods, many senior members were skeptical about talking to the press. No senior official accepted to speak on the accusation of casualisation of staff, poor remuneration, and the absence of Nigerians in the top hierarchy of management.

However, after oscillating between his company's official policy of not speaking to journalists and the accusations not being true, an official (who pleaded anonymity) declared the allegations to be false. According to him, the company pays wages according to structures stipulated by Food and Beverage Labour Union (FBLU) and Agriculture Labour Union (ALU). When reminded that it was Nigeria, through its law on minimum wage, which determines how workers should be paid, he refused to comment further. He however claimed that many Nigerians were directors and many others at top managerial positions in the company. However, he did not show any proof insisting that he was not supposed to speak with the press.

The story of Layemi, a fresh secondary school leaver, tells more of the position of Asian companies in the country. He had his eyes on university education or polytechnic, but had problems with his O'Level papers.

After months at home doing nothing, following his Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (SSCE), he and a couple of friends considered getting a casual job in the neighbourhoods. Their quest took them to Fatai Atere Way in Mushin area of Lagos, where after days of queuing at the gate of a frontline Asian company owned by a Lebanese, which produces plastic products.

Layemi was, however, 'fortunate' to be picked among the new casual workers for the month. His joy knew no bounds, as he believed that at least, his new job would help him in the purchase of a General Certificate of Education (GCE) form and a possible enrolment in an evening tutorial centre.

Four months after, Layemi's dream of writing the GCE examination, which was a few weeks away from commencement, was shattered. During one of his routine assignments as a casual worker, the trimming machine he was working with 'trimmed' the whole of his right hand, up to the wrist, leaving the left with only two fingers. Layemi was hospitalised all through the span of the GCE exams, while efforts to make his employees do something about his condition were entirely futile.

This young Nigerian is only one of the thousands in the employment of Asian-owned industries, whose human dignity, especially as workers, has been substituted for the financial gains of their employers. Little or nothing is arranged in terms of welfare and insurance for employees, even in the area of medicals and commensurate wages for their services.

Odom submitted that the offer of employment by the Asian business owners is not in any way in the interest of the Nigerians.

Said he: "It is not that they give jobs to Nigerians; it is because they find cheap labour in Nigeria, they find a docile populace who cannot protest against injustices. It is because they found an environment that is enmeshed in harsh poverty and the need for survival makes people to toe the lines of least resistance. When you get to those places, there might not be provision for security; there might not be appropriate medical plans for the workers.

"It is one thing to give a man a job and it is another thing to give a man a living wage. What you need to ask yourself is what happens in those industries where Nigerians constitute a majority? In many of them, you will find no top management staff that is a Nigerian, you will find no director that is a Nigerian. For one, in the Vaswani conglomerate, there are over 200 directors, none of those directors is a Nigerian, all of them are Indian expatriates."

Odom particularly decried the non-commensurate wages paid to the Nigerian staff of these Asian-owned companies. He said: "The jobs they give to Nigerians are the shop-floor jobs; those who move raw materials into the machines, those who work on those machines that chop off legs and hands yet they remain on poor salaries. Most of these Nigerians are casual staff; most of them don't even have what you can call a formal contract. The Asians use administrative manipulations to treat those Nigerians like that.

"In these factories, industries or corporations or whatever you call it, run by these Asians, Nigerians are technically disenfranchised from accessing what is due them. They would keep you on probation for 10 years. You may not even possess valid contract papers that proclaim you as a staff; it is like they are testing you. Some even live in the mirage that soon they would confirm their appointment and before you know it, you have worked for 30 years with nothing to show! If you take a stroll round the nation, you will see families that have been ruined because their parents worked for these organisations."

But, the foregoing does not in any way remove the fact that the Asians and their business have been of some importance to the Nigerian economy. As a matter of fact, their businesses in the country are many and appear to be the only ones still standing under the harsh economic condition of the country today.

For instance, Rajan alone can boast of about six important companies still standing today in the country. Some of them include: Veepee, Arvee, Abvee, Bumni Veevee, and others; all limited liability companies.

Since Friday, March 6, Odom has been in hiding following information that operatives of the State Security Service (SSS) were looking for him in connection with the call he made at the February press conference.

He had said: "The national director-general of State Security Services (SSS), the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) and the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) should, immediately offer full protection to, and commence investigations into the persistent threats to the life of Dr. Shirish Tanksale and his family by Mr. Rajan Vaswani. We make this demand on the premise that Vaswani's powerful political, economic and social connections through his large assets and resources pose a clear and present danger to this innocent Nigerian in his quest for justice."

According to Odom, three operatives of the SSS had arrived at the CLO Head Office that Friday at about 12. 35 p.m. with a white Peugeot Minivan. The vehicle had tinted glasses.

Odom said: "They had come to take me to detention. Not finding me, they threatened to get me by all means."

He further said that they refused to speak to any other person except the Acting Executive Director, Ibuchukwu Ezike, who told them that having led the civil rights agitation in the country for almost 25 years, nobody could intimidate the CLO."

When a contact was made with Odom, he said he was fearful because he was yet to determine if intimidation and vendetta would not be in the cards for him.

In attempt to put a finger on what makes Asians succeed in Nigeria so much so that they have somewhat become a law unto themselves, that they have in almost all the nooks and crannies of the country, Odom attributes it to their hard work which compromises nothing.

His words: "Attraction for the influx of the Asians and other nationalities into this country is the lawless environment, which protects their business interests unquestionably. The Asians are hard working business-oriented people, and that is their primary occupation. They substitute hard work with God. In other words, in the figment of their imaginations and by all calculations, God does not exist and nothing else exists except raw, human bravado. So, wherever they find their hard work paying off, they go there and establish businesses. Nigeria offers them that kind of environment."


*Additional report by Oba' Adeoye (Daily Independent - Saturday 14th March 2009)

EFCC are scammers themselves, arresting today and telling us tomorrow that they were innocent.

lexdino:

EFCC are scammers themselves, arresting today and telling us tomorrow that they were innocent.

Bribes well paid.