Theophilus Danjuma, a
retired army genera,l and
former defence minister, is
one of Nigeria’s richest
personalities, courtesy of his
ownership of one of Nigeria’s
most lucrative oil blocs and a
money spinning shipping
firm.
The retired general is a long
time user of offshore entities,
and the Mossac Fonseca files
has now exposed another of
his companies – Eastcoast
Investments Inc – which he
incorporated in Nassau, in
the Bahamas, on March 25,
1997.
At inception, Mr. Danjuma
and a certain Colin Marcel
Dixon were directors of the
company.
PREMIUM TIMES learnt that
the general formed the
company to enable him to do
business with Scancem
International of Norway
when the later decided to
expand its involvement in
Africa to include a project in
Nigeria.
But the company soon
became embroiled in a messy
bribery scandal, with
Scancem, according to court
papers, later buying out
Eastcoast Investment from
the project on December 1,
2003.
It was later determined that
“the money went mainly to
another account, Eastcoast
Investment had, to General
T.Y. Danjuma and a certain
The Volta Company”.
As the controversy raged, Mr.
Danjuma resigned as director
of the company, but we did
not sight any document
indicating that he transferred
his shareholding to anyone. A certain Satish Chander Dosaj, who
later died, replaced him. On his death,
Elizabeth Dixon, believed to be Mr.
Dixon’s wife, was brought in as director.
But even before incorporating Eastcoast
as a special purpose vehicle to do
business with Scancem, Mr. Danjuma
had used several offshore entities in the
past, mostly registered in tax havens.
The database, Opencorporates, indicate
that Mr. Danjuma served as director and
vice-president of Cross Group Holdings
International, which was registered in
Panama on October 15, 1976.
Mr. Danjuma was still in service and was
Chief of Army Staff at the time the
company was incorporated. He was also
director of Zara Logistics, a company
registered in Cyprus on September 2,
1993.
It remains unclear what businesses Mr.
Danjuma used the companies to transact.
The retired general was also among
global personalities found to maintain
secret accounts, operated with codes,
with the Swiss branch of banking giant,
HSBC.
He was linked to HSBC account 15731CD,
which was opened in 1993 and closed in
2001.
That revelation came to during the
February 2015 #Swissleaks investigation
which exposed some of Nigeria’s
wealthiest industrialists, former
government officials and their relatives,
among thousands of individuals around
the world who operated highly secretive
foreign accounts with HSB​C, concealing
their identities for years and using codes
perhaps to shake off tax authorities from
accounts.
Some of the accounts were found to hold
illicit assets from criminals, traffickers,
arms dealers and other outlaws, secret
files published last week by a consortium
of journalists around the world have
shown.
That trove of documents, released by the
French Daily, Le Monde and ICIJ, in
partnership with PREMIUM TIMES, and
a host of other major media
organisations around the world, showed
how HSBC profited doing business with
people who stole from their countries
and some of the world’s most notorious
con artists, including people who made a
fortune fuelling wars in Africa.
PREMIUM TIMES was also the only
Nigerian publication involved in that
investigation, which lasted several
months between 2014 and 2015.
The documents seen by this newspaper
at the time did not provide details
regarding the balances in the account
and the use to which Mr. Danjuma put it.
An elaborate bribery and corruption
Scheme
Court documents obtained by PREMIUM
TIMES independently of the leaked
Mossac Fonseca files described Scancem,
Mr. Danjuma’s business partner, as
being “involved in extensive bribery
and corruption in a number of countries
in Africa”.
The company’s elaborate bribery
operation in the continent was
supervised and coordinated by the head
of its Africa business, Tor Egil Kjelsaas,
who also had a warm relationship with
the retired general and his company.
It was revealed that sometimes, Mr
Kjelsaas withdrew cash from banks in
London and Luxembourg and flew with
it to bribe local contacts in Africa,
especially in Ghana.
Some of the monies were handed over to
local contacts in envelopes while others
were transferred to accounts in
Luxembourg, Switzerland and other
places.
But while Mr Kjelsaas was helping to
coordinate Scancem bribery operation
across Africa, he was alleged to have
kept some of the bribe money for
himself.
The document also revealed how Messrs.
Danjuma, Kjelsaas and Dixon, who
himself was an employee of Scancem,
allegedly collaborated to obtain a $3.2
million buyout from Scancem.
Scancem operations in Nigeria started in
1997 but was short-lived because the
company incurred huge losses which the
court blamed on Mr. Kjelsaas, who left
the company in 1999 but was retained
as a consultant until 2001 and was
involved in the company’s operation at
the time.
“Kjelsaas drained Scancem’s
involvement in Nigeria of significant
funds,” the court revealed.
Due to the huge losses, Scancem opted to
walk out from the Nigerian operations,
but its contract with Eastcoast, which
was signed under Mr. Kjelsaas’
management, required it to pay out a
significant sum to Eastcoast before it
could exit the partnership. If Scancem
had taken this option, its losses would
have been very significant. So, it decided
to buy out Eastcoast’s shares in the
business.
In July 2003, before buying out
Eastcoast, Scancem hired Hibis, a private
investigative company to make enquiries
about the ownership of Eastcoast, the
company discovered that “most of the
commission moneys paid to Eastcoast
went toMr. Dixon and a company,
Tormead Ltd.
Further investigation showed that Mr
Kjelsaas was the real owner of Tormean
Ltd. According to court documents,
$190,000.00 was transferred to Tormead
Ltd from the contractual commission
paid to Eastcoast.
On December 1, 2003, Scancem bought
out Eastcoast for $3.2 million. Once the
money was paid, most of it was
transferred to another account operated
by Eastcoast, some to Mr. Danjuma,
while $790,000.00 was transferred to
The Volta Company, a firm believed to
be linked with Mr Kjelsaas.
Mr. Danjuma did not answer calls made
by PREMIUM TIMES to his known mobile
number. Neither did he respond to text
messages seeking comments for this
story.


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