₦airaland Forum

Paving way for janjawiids

loopman:
Taju. Nobody trolls on NL better than you.

Who you dey call Taju, Tajudeen

OJUcrook:
Is it Buhari that told Tompolo to steal a land belonging to the Itsekiri's and to sell it using a forged CofO ?

Pls which land do you have in Warri?

You don forger how Ijaw and Urhobo dealt with una over ownership of Warri

Don't make yoruba deceive you again oh

You are settlers in Warri and not landlords.

The water fronts are Ijaw land while the uplands comprising parts of Warri and Efurun are Urhobo land.

Make una maintain well

OJUcrook:
The Ijaws are gradually attratcing resentment for themselves in Delta state.
Tompolo and his Ijaw Militia stole the land on Itsekiri soil; forged a CofO; and sold the land to former President Jonathan's FG led government to be a site where National Maritame University would be located.


Professor Itse Sagay, a Itsekiri man from Delta state is the chairman of the Presidential Anti-Corruption Committie. A report from the committee indicted Tompolo in the land sales scam.

Festus Keyamo, an Urhobo man also from Delra state is the EFCC's prosecuting councel in this case against Tompolo

Una won start that nonsense una do back in the 90's abi?

E be like say una never learn una lesson.

koboko69:
Wake me up when u start sounding reasonably. I cant even understand the Christian muslim thing and all your poo

Keep sleeping

lawydewy:
It has been proven that it was not safe in the hands Jonathan..


Where is SURE-P today?

You are a hypocrite and a slave to your own bigotry and hatred

Yorubas

Sparrow13:
En shia en wuta.


Munafikia


Dakikai


Kafiria

Shiites are Kafurs?

Abeg when una go start una civil war for north

I see no reason why since most Nigereins crossed the border and voted for Buhari

koboko69:
Was there an alternative route in Zaria?

Convoy blocked by MFN members holding sticks and cutlasses threatening the COAS convoy?

Can you throw more light on how the convoy was blocked please?

B4 i shut u up finally for this dead logic.

Are you defending the massacre of civilians because they opposed traffic?

If so next time my route is blocked in Abuja around Area 1 by Muslims praying on the road I will simply put it on full gear and blast through them

mrmetoo1:
Dude oil o, taxes o, customs o, palm oil o. However Nigeria as a nation is making money is my concern. It's your business if you're ignorant of the fact that the money your guys are stealing for themselves is meant to make your life better. Sit down there talking about oil, while others are about to start racking their billions from other products and services.

Your useless president when asked how he intends to improve and diversify the economy stated that he intends to "stabilise international oil prices" with the help of the nigerian army.

Your messiah president appointed himself minister of petroleum and is spending 40bn naira looking for more oil in the Boko ravaged northeast.

Your foolish president still insisted on $38 benchmark for crude to draw his gbesse deficit budget.

If you want to castigate any body for their oil craving gluttony you need not look further than the goat you voted in.

Besides I want that oil to crash to zero so that you parasitic ingrates can take your reptilian gaze off my region.

Tinubu's first contact with Chagoury began during the Abacha regime and Tinubu's pretend membership of NADECO

Chagoury was a major business confidant to Abacha and international fixer for that regime.

The Clinton administration was set to pass sweeping sanctions against Abacha until Chagoury's timely campaign fundind to Clinton's second bid and also to the Clinton foundation.

There is no need stating that Chagoury's campaign funding to Clinton came from non other than Abacha himsel!

The Clinton administration will later tone down to opting for "sincere dialogue" in returning Nigeria to democratic rule.

Tinubu who at this time was recently sent back to Nigeria to infiltrate civil advocacy groups by his CIA handlers and was now parading himself as an agent of democtacy and good governance was suggested to Chagoury as a possible vp candidate to Abacha during his transition from military to civilian govt.

Chagoury was in a position to lobby Abacha in seeing Tinubu as a go between candidate to pacify the SW over Abiola's june 12 mandate and also the Americans.

The death of Abacha ended this arrangement.

Chagoury will later support Tinubu in his quest to dominate SW political terrain.

Tinubu after all is a godson to Chagoury

The recently crowned "Leader" of the Yoruba race is nothing but a godson to Chagoyry

Tinubu's first contact with Chagoury began during the Abacha regime and Tinubu's pretend membership of NADECO

Chagoury was a major business confidant to Abacha and international fixer for that regime.

The Clinton administration was set to pass sweeping sanctions against Abacha until Chagoury's timely campaign fundind to Clinton's second bid and also to the Clinton foundation.

There is no need stating that Chagoury's campaign funding to Clinton came from non other than Abacha himsel!

The Clinton administration will later tone down to opting for "sincere dialogue" in returning Nigeria to democratic rule.

Tinubu who at this time was recently sent back to Nigeria to infiltrate civil advocacy groups by his CIA handlers and was now parading himself as an agent of democtacy and good governance was suggested to Chagoury as a possible vp candidate to Abacha during his transition from military to civilian govt.

Chagoury was in a position to lobby Abacha in seeing Tinubu as a go between candidate to pacify the SW over Abiola's june 12 mandate and also the Americans.

The death of Abacha ended this arrangement.

Chagoury will later support Tinubu in his quest to dominate SW political terrain.

Tinubu after all is a godson to Chagoury

mrmetoo1:
I don't care who backs who, if I trust his record I'll vote for him. I've just refused to keep voting for folks that see our common wealth as their personal wealth. It doesn't matter if the person wins or lose, I'll keep voting who I believe is best for this country at any particular time.

Keep deluding yourself and what is this nonsense talk about "commonwealth"?

You mean to say our common awoof because if it was from your land this oil is coming from you won't see it as common wealth

Keep deluding yourself

The Petroleum Republic dies with the price of crude

kingbasil:
These assertions are hard to digest...this is commendable bro...

This is the harsh reality in the federal petroleum republic of nijeriya .

mrmetoo1:
Sorry but we're not sorry we voted change. I'll choose someone fighting selective corruption than someone that let it thrive, people that almost legitimized corruption. You see a politician abs automatically conclude he has hundreds of millions to billions somewhere not because he's head of a major corporation or industry but because he has access to public funds. At least right now we're hearing whispers of the Haliburton case, what would a vote for Jonathan have meant please? Even if the purpose of the vote for change is to keep our leaders in their toes, to let them know we have the power to chase them out then our votes were well worth it.

If you like vote for Al Mustapha Hamza in 2023 when Chagoury and Hillary Clinton back him for presidency.

In July 2004, police lay in wait at an airfield in the far northeastern corner of Nigeria. Gilbert Chagoury, a Lebanese businessman and one-time adviser to the late dictator Sani Abacha, was set to touch down in his private jet. Nuhu Ribadu, then the country's top anti-corruption prosecutor, says that Chagoury was a kingpin in the corruption that defined Abacha's regime.

"You couldn't investigate corruption without looking at Chagoury," Ribadu tells me in a recent interview in California.

Six years after Abacha's death, Ribadu's officers stood ready to take Chagoury down. Ribadu says that Chagoury made it possible for Abacha to steal billions of dollars and lined his own pockets in the process. The prosecutor says he indicted Chagoury and ordered his arrest for relatively minor violations related to Chagoury's businesses so that he could later bring additional charges for his activities in the Abacha era.

But, no sooner had Chagoury's plane hit the ground, than it took off again. Ribadu says it's likely that an airport official tipped him off, and Ribadu's big catch slipped away, literally into thin air.

Chagoury was among the last of the all-powerful middlemen who served the heads of oil-rich African states, says Philippe Vasset, longtime editor of Africa Energy Intelligence, one of a series of influential energy industry newsletters. "He [Chagoury] was the gatekeeper to Abacha's presidency," Vasset says.

In many African countries, a Western entrepreneur might hand over money to a fixer or middleman, who would then pass it on to a political leader in exchange for support for a business venture. In Nigeria, Vasset explains, Chagoury was just such a figure in the mid-1990s, when Abacha ruled the country and held the key to much of the country's oil wealth.

Today, Chagoury is a diplomat representing the tiny island nation of St. Lucia. He is also a friend of former President Bill Clinton and a generous philanthropist, who, since the Abacha years, has used his money to establish respectability. He appeared near the top of the Clinton Foundation donor list in 2008 as a $1 million to $5 million contributor, according to foundation documents. (His name made the list again in 2009.)

Chagoury's contribution to the Louvre in Paris some years back was large enough for the museum to name a gallery for him and his wife. In recent years, he has put up $10 million for the construction of medical and nursing schools in Lebanon, his parents' country of origin, that also bear the Chagoury name.

Unlike his friend, the former president [Clinton], Chagoury conducts his affairs largely out of public view. He rarely talks to reporters.
Unlike his friend, the former president, Chagoury conducts his affairs largely out of public view. He rarely talks to reporters.

But on a cool day in late 2008, I headed up a gently winding road in Beverly Hills, where Chagoury's Moorish-style villa sprawls across the top of a steep canyon. The home once belonged to entertainer Danny Thomas, and Richard Nixon, Raquel Welch, and Michael Caine have all lived in the neighborhood.

After a written request for an interview and many follow-up phone calls, Chagoury invited me to meet him. "We'll see if we can get along," he said. Chagoury's home is packed with art, antiques, and crystal chandeliers, and offers a staggering view across West Los Angeles to the Pacific Ocean.

As I'm taking it all in, Chagoury climbs a thickly carpeted, winding staircase to the living room to greet me. He's a stout man, dressed in a navy blue sport coat with buttons that strain against a barrel chest. His fingernails are buffed and manicured, and he has a full head of salt-and-pepper hair.

Almost immediately, he has a proposal: Do your story, but don't sell your work to a media outlet. "Do it for me," he says, offering me access and contacts -- even the chance to write a book. In exchange, I would get cash, and he would get full control of the product. I politely turn him down, but he brings up the offer several times during the interview.

"I am an industrialist," he says in lightly accented, near-perfect English. "I spend a lot of time with my family. I don't have time to do all that people say I do."
As we talk, I learn that much of what Chagoury says about himself is so out of sync with the public record and what others have told me -- even those who are friendly toward him -- that it seems he's not just in the market for positive spin, but for all-out reinvention.

When I bring up his days in Nigeria, he tells me that he detests his reputation as Abacha's middleman. "I am not in that business," he says. Rather, he has worked hard since he was a teenager, building a conglomerate called The Chagoury Group, which employs 20,000 people in Nigeria in construction, real estate development, telecommunications, and other sectors.

"I am an industrialist," he says in lightly accented, near-perfect English. "I spend a lot of time with my family. I don't have time to do all that people say I do."

"I have never bribed anyone," he says, looking me straight in the eye. "I have never had to make a crooked deal." He is absolutely sure of himself, even though he has offered me a bribe of sorts just minutes earlier.

As for Ribadu, the Nigerian investigator who says his officers nearly made that 2004 arrest on corruption charges, Chagoury says, "He's not such hot stuff." He tells me that Ribadu -- who until 2007 headed the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, an agency similar to the FBI -- was an attack-dog set against the enemies of President Olusegun Obasanjo, who appointed him.


Olusegun Obasanjo was elected president of Nigeria in 1999 on an anti-corruption platform.

Ribadu was pushed out of his job after Obasanjo left office, and says he was given the freedom to act independently during his tenure and was ousted because of his zealous prosecution of high-level officials.

Chagoury, who turns 64 this month, was born in Lagos and is the eldest of eight children. He has dual citizenship in Lebanon and the United Kingdom because of his parents' heritage and because he was born in Nigeria while it was still under British rule.

His father came to West Africa in the 1930s from the northern Lebanese town of Miziara. The elder Chagoury followed what was by then a well-worn migrant trail to Nigeria, where he traded in textiles and helped his brother in a small trucking operation.

Chagoury is part of the Lebanese diaspora, which is by some estimates several times larger than the population of Lebanon, and includes such influential members as Mexican businessman Carlos Slim, the world's third richest man, Columbian entertainer Shakira, and American activist Ralph Nader.

Like their Palestinian and Jewish neighbors, the Lebanese have scattered about the world, and Chagoury seems equally at home in Lagos or Beverly Hills. He has also maintained close ties to his parents' home town of Miziara.

Today, Miziara survives -- and even thrives -- because of Chagoury and his brothers, says Gilbert Aoun, who was Lebanon's ambassador to Nigeria during Abacha's rule. Still, nine months of the year, the mountainous settlement of some 15,000 is a ghost town, Aoun says, because most Miziarans old enough to work are employed by the Chagourys in Nigeria.

Chagoury didn't grow up rich, but he says that he always wanted the security and prestige that money brings. He went into business with his father-in-law, and later with his brother. The family established several flour mills in Benin and Nigeria, a construction company in Nigeria, and a club in Lagos.

An Indispensable Adviser

Chagoury says he met Abacha by chance on a flight to the Niger Delta city of Port Harcourt, when the future dictator was a young officer. The two struck up a friendship, and when Abacha seized power in a 1993 coup, Chagoury became the general's indispensable adviser.

General Abacha was an eccentric man and a brutal leader, who consolidated his power by declaring martial law and jailing political rivals. He kept a menagerie of exotic animals and rarely removed his sunglasses. The regime drew worldwide condemnation in 1995, when activist playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other men who had campaigned against the environmental degradation of the oil-rich Niger Delta were executed for what most observers say were trumped-up murder charges.

From his earliest days in power, Abacha set the tone for an administration that would become the most corrupt in Nigeria's history. Today, more than a decade after the dictator's death, investigators from Washington DC to the Nigerian capital of Abuja are still unraveling the web of shady dealings around Abacha's rule.

Within months of taking office in 1993, Abacha began to divert money from Nigeria's central bank to the overseas bank accounts of his family members and associates, including Chagoury's. A lawsuit brought by the Nigerian government against Abacha's heirs and associates in the United Kingdom shows that the dictator fraudulently ordered the bank transfers for national security purposes.

By the time of Abacha's death in 1998, those so-called security payments would total $2 billion, but they would represent less than half the funds that money-laundering investigators around the world estimate that Abacha and his associates stole from their country.

However, Abacha found other ways to pad his bank accounts. A $180 million bribery scheme -- the largest ever discovered as part of a U.S. Justice Department investigation -- was hatched the first year Abacha was in office.

Halliburton's Nigerian Bribes

The scheme began in the early 1990s, when Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), at the time a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation, led a joint venture that bid for a $6 billion contract to build a sprawling liquefied natural gas facility in the Niger Delta.

The group won the bid, but not before Abacha had agreed to accept a $40 million bribe that he would share with other Nigerian officials, according to Department of Justice court papers. It was the first installment of $180 million in bribes that KBR would pay, not only to officials of the Abacha regime, but to officials of the two heads of state who succeeded him.

A few months before I interviewed Chagoury, former KBR CEO Jack Stanley had pleaded guilty in a Texas courtroom to charges related to organizing the bribery scheme that went on for a decade in Nigeria, and to taking millions in kickbacks for himself. Since then, two more KBR contractors have been indicted, and Halliburton entered a guilty plea and paid the government a record fine of more than $500 million.

Chagoury denies any involvement in the bribery case, but his name surfaces in notes taken by one of the indictees, William [Wojciech] Chodan [Chaudan].
Chagoury denies any involvement in the bribery case, but his name surfaces in notes taken by one of the indictees, Chodan, who kept detailed records of so-called cultural meetings, where bribes were discussed.

One entry reads, "$250 ... to IPCO via Chagoury."

When I ask Chagoury about these records, he doesn't dispute that the note refers to a sum of $250 million, but he argues that it refers to a contract, which, he says, was legitimately awarded to one of his companies, IPCO Nigeria Limited, for construction related to the liquefied natural gas plant.

Chagoury has not been named by the Department of Justice or charged with any crime related to the KBR affair.

His work as an intermediary for Abacha went beyond business affairs. He was also deeply involved in diplomacy, even though he held no official government post. In the mid-1990s, when Nigeria came under increasing pressure from Washington to hold elections, Chagoury gained access to high-level U.S. emissaries like Jesse Jackson and Bill Richardson as well as to a number of senior State Department officials, according to Donald McHenry, a former American ambassador to the United Nations, who worked in U.S.-Nigeria diplomacy at the time.

The Clinton Connections

Chagoury, along with his wife and three of his children, were guests at a the Clinton's White House holiday dinner shortly after Chagoury gave nearly half a million dollars to a voter registration committee, Vote Now '96, according to a report in The Washington Post. (Chagoury would have been barred from donating directly to the Clinton campaign because he is not a U.S. citizen.) Since then, Chagoury and Clinton have traveled together and seen each other socially.

"Every one knows I'm friends with the Clintons," Chagoury says.

As Abacha's health began to fail in the late 1990s, Chagoury made major efforts to prop up the dictator. A State Department memo obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, entitled "The Health Watch on the Head of State Continues," shows that Chagoury appeared to have brought medical specialists and sophisticated medical equipment to the presidential residence in Abuja, while publicly downplaying the seriousness of Abacha's condition.

When Abacha died in June 1998, a second State Department memo notes that Chagoury placed an in-flight call from his private plane to the U.S. embassy in Nigeria to report that he was in touch with Nigeria's Provisional Ruling Council, which would be meeting later that day to discuss a successor to Abacha. In the phone call, Chagoury asked what governmental structure would be acceptable to U.S. officials, according to the memo.

Immediately after Abacha's death, Ribadu, then a young police investigator, says he began looking into the dictator's financial affairs. "It wasn't uncommon for Nigerian leaders to put money elsewhere," Ribadu says. "But the magnitude was beyond anybody's comprehension."

The money -- estimated at more than $4 billion -- was stashed in Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, and the Isle of Jersey in the names of dozens of individuals and companies. Ribadu argues that it was Chagoury who vouched for Abacha's sons at banks where the source of their assets might otherwise have been questioned.

Indeed, Chagoury's Swiss attorney, Luc Argand, told me that his client served as a reference for Abacha's sons at Credit Suisse. The Nigerian government eventually requested help from law enforcement around the world in tracking the stolen assets. In 2000, Chagoury was convicted in Geneva, Switzerland, of laundering money and aiding a criminal organization in connection with the billions of dollars stolen from Nigeria during the Abacha years.

Argand has insisted that Chagoury used the money for diplomatic missions on behalf of Abacha. Asked if he had records to substantiate that claim, Argand said he couldn't produce any. He also conceded that the money was "stolen by Abacha, and had to be returned."

However, Argand says that Chagoury had already decided on his own to return it. In the end, he says, his client agreed to a plea deal: Chagoury would pay a fine of a million Swiss francs and hand over $66 million to the Nigerian government. Swiss authorities promised to expunge the conviction after two years, which they have done.

In 1999, Chagoury won immunity from prosecution in a separate looted-assets case in Nigeria by agreeing to return money that he held in Swiss bank accounts. The precise amount that Chagoury returned is unclear.

Meanwhile, the hunt for Nigeria's stolen treasure continues. A panel appointed by Nigeria's current president, Umaru Yar'Adua, is currently investigating which Nigerian officials took bribes in the Halliburton case and has reportedly requested U.S. Department of Justice cooperation in the probe. However, some Nigeria watchers, including Ribadu, doubt the seriousness of the inquiry.

The Clinton Foundation did not respond to emailed questions and repeated phone calls about the nature of Bill and Hillary Clinton's relationship with Chagoury.
While the Nigerian government struggles to recoup the losses it suffered under Abacha, Chagoury has prospered and continued to win acceptance from influential people around the world.

Last year, he was knighted by the Catholic Church and inducted into the Order of St. Gregory the Great, an honor bestowed upon those who serve the church, including many who are big donors to the institution. Bob Hope, Ricardo Montalban, and Rupert Murdoch are among past recipients.

The Clinton Foundation did not respond to emailed questions and repeated phone calls about the nature of Bill and Hillary Clinton's relationship with Chagoury. Former Democratic Party chairman Terry McAuliffe, who, according to The Washington Post, was a sponsor of Chagoury's invitation to the White House in 1996, also failed to return phone calls. A spokesman for former Clinton political advisor James Carville, also a Chagoury acquaintance, said that Carville could not comment on the relationship.

And Chagoury hasn't stopped earning his fortune. Knowledgeable sources say that Chagoury controls South Atlantic Petroleum, a company that was awarded a choice oil exploration license before Abacha's death. Three years ago, the company sold a portion of its government-granted concession to the Chinese oil company, China National Offshore Oil Corporation, for $2.7 billion.

In our interview, Chagoury didn't deny that he profited from the deal, but he said rumors that former President Clinton helped make the deal happen were untrue.

Chagoury is unfazed by the crackdown by the U.S. Justice Department on foreign bribery, exemplified by the Halliburton case, and waves off the recent spate of prosecutions like an elder statesman: "You have lobbyists; we have agents," he says.

"You are never going to stop corruption," because it's favoritism, and that's human nature, which laws won't change, he tells me.

It's no wonder he is so confident. He is now free to come and go in Nigeria, while his nemesis, corruption hunter Nuhu Ribadu, left the country last year, he says, after an attempt on his life.

obailala:
And I suppose by your beautiful logic, a vote for Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan is the vote which wouldn't have been a waste right?... Clap for yourself!

You are irrelevant.

Your vote was a mere formality.

If it had gone either way, the powers that be would have supported a parallel govt to oversee the affairs of the Federal Petroleum Republic of Nigeria.

This thread is not about your vote but about how that process will only lead to recycling those who are willing to do the bidding of an international crime syndicate in the form of the Washington Mafia.


You my friend are deluded by thinking your votes ever counted in this fraud assembly.

And nearly 20yrs later... we are back to the same Abacha era.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

BishopMagic:
[size=18pt]Tinubu takes the notorious Chagoury brothers to Buhari for a closed door[/size]
April 21, 2015


APC leader, Ahmed Bola Tinubu, may have commenced his deft moves as he recently  brought the very notorious  Chagoury brothers to meet with the president-elect in a closed door meeting.
It was not clear what was discussed but consider the fact the Chagoury brothers, who threw in some cash for the Buhari Campaign,  are big players of sundry shades, business deals would have featured prominently.
The Lebanon brothers played a prominent role in helping the Abacha family stash billions of stolen state cash in foreign banks.
Immediately after Abacha’s death, ex EFCC czar, Nuhu Ribadu, who unsuccessfully tried to indict and arrest Chagoury in 2004,  then a young police investigator, said he began looking into the dictator’s financial affairs.
“It wasn’t uncommon for Nigerian leaders to put money elsewhere,” Ribadu says. “But the magnitude was beyond anybody’s comprehension.”
The money — estimated at more than $4 billion — was stashed in Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, and the Isle of Jersey in the names of dozens of individuals and companies. Ribadu argues that it was Chagoury who vouched for Abacha’s sons at banks where the source of their assets might otherwise have been questioned.
Indeed, Chagoury’s Swiss attorney, Luc Argand, said his client served as a reference for Abacha’s sons at Credit Suisse.
The Nigerian government eventually requested help from law enforcement around the world in tracking the stolen assets.
In 2000, Chagoury was convicted in Geneva, Switzerland, of laundering money and aiding a criminal organization in connection with the billions of dollars stolen from Nigeria during the Abacha years.
Six  years after Gen. Sani Abacha’s death, Ribadu’s officers stood ready to take  Gilbert Chagoury down. Ribadu says that Chagoury made it possible for Abacha to steal billions of dollars and lined his own pockets in the process.
The prosecutor says he indicted Chagoury and ordered his arrest for relatively minor violations related to Chagoury’s businesses so that he could later bring additional charges for his activities in the Abacha era.
Private business tycoons are not left out of the visits, Forte Oil CEO, Femi Otedola, and Oando boss Adewale Tinubu also visited Buhari last week.
Both money men donated millions of dollars to the Buhari Campaign Organisation. Speculations have it that the name of the  Oando boss has been suggested to Buhari by  Asiwaju  as the next Petroleum Minister.
Although  Chagoury denies any involvement in the Halliburton bribery case, but his name surfaced in notes taken by one of the indictees, Chodan, who kept detailed records of so-called cultural meetings, where bribes were discussed.
One entry reads, “$250 … to IPCO via Chagoury.”
When I ask Chagoury about these records, he doesn’t dispute that the note refers to a sum of $250 million, but he argues that it refers to a contract, which, he says, was legitimately awarded to one of his companies, IPCO Nigeria Limited, for construction related to the liquefied natural gas plant.
Reports say  Buhari,  however refused to have audience with  the current Comptroller-General of Customs, Abdullahi Dikko Inde,  and NSCDC boss , Ade Abolurin, who visited his residence in Daura to “pay homage.”
Yankarireporters.com learnt that the customs boss,  immediately after informing the President-Elect of his mission was advised to go back to his duty post.
Dikko, shocked by Buhari’s response tried unsuccessfully to inform the retired General of the situation at all Nigeria’s borders, seaport and the airports, but the President-elect upbraided the 55 year-old that the ideal procedure is to wait until he has been sworn in as president, describing the visit as unhealthy, unethical and disloyalty to a government he is still serving.
The visit of the current Commandant-General of the NSCDC, Ade Abolurin, was reportedly more dramatic. He  arrived Daura with top officers of the corps, photographers and some members of
According to a member of the Buhari Campaign from Katsina, “The President-Elect was having his normal quiet time when the delegation arrived”.
The corps officers led by its commandant were left outside in the scorching sun for over an hour, before the commandant and two corps officers were allowed entry into the President-elect’s visitors room.
But shortly after an aide of Buhari, said that the retired General wants him out of his residence and will not be seeing him.
Dumbfounded the corps officers left in a haste to the surprise of other delegation members outside, who were waiting and hoping to see the president-elect and take photographs with him.
A serving minister last week also sent emissaries to the president-elect in a bid to secure a private meeting.
The  deluge of top current serving government officials and visitors reaching out to General Buhari at this material time has turned his Daura home to a new Mecca.

Next time you will apply some commonsense before you waste your votes.

In July 2004, police lay in wait at an airfield in the far northeastern corner of Nigeria. Gilbert Chagoury, a Lebanese businessman and one-time adviser to the late dictator Sani Abacha, was set to touch down in his private jet. Nuhu Ribadu, then the country's top anti-corruption prosecutor, says that Chagoury was a kingpin in the corruption that defined Abacha's regime.

"You couldn't investigate corruption without looking at Chagoury," Ribadu tells me in a recent interview in California.

Six years after Abacha's death, Ribadu's officers stood ready to take Chagoury down. Ribadu says that Chagoury made it possible for Abacha to steal billions of dollars and lined his own pockets in the process. The prosecutor says he indicted Chagoury and ordered his arrest for relatively minor violations related to Chagoury's businesses so that he could later bring additional charges for his activities in the Abacha era.

But, no sooner had Chagoury's plane hit the ground, than it took off again. Ribadu says it's likely that an airport official tipped him off, and Ribadu's big catch slipped away, literally into thin air.

Chagoury was among the last of the all-powerful middlemen who served the heads of oil-rich African states, says Philippe Vasset, longtime editor of Africa Energy Intelligence, one of a series of influential energy industry newsletters. "He [Chagoury] was the gatekeeper to Abacha's presidency," Vasset says.

In many African countries, a Western entrepreneur might hand over money to a fixer or middleman, who would then pass it on to a political leader in exchange for support for a business venture. In Nigeria, Vasset explains, Chagoury was just such a figure in the mid-1990s, when Abacha ruled the country and held the key to much of the country's oil wealth.

Today, Chagoury is a diplomat representing the tiny island nation of St. Lucia. He is also a friend of former President Bill Clinton and a generous philanthropist, who, since the Abacha years, has used his money to establish respectability. He appeared near the top of the Clinton Foundation donor list in 2008 as a $1 million to $5 million contributor, according to foundation documents. (His name made the list again in 2009.)

Chagoury's contribution to the Louvre in Paris some years back was large enough for the museum to name a gallery for him and his wife. In recent years, he has put up $10 million for the construction of medical and nursing schools in Lebanon, his parents' country of origin, that also bear the Chagoury name.

Unlike his friend, the former president [Clinton], Chagoury conducts his affairs largely out of public view. He rarely talks to reporters.
Unlike his friend, the former president, Chagoury conducts his affairs largely out of public view. He rarely talks to reporters.

But on a cool day in late 2008, I headed up a gently winding road in Beverly Hills, where Chagoury's Moorish-style villa sprawls across the top of a steep canyon. The home once belonged to entertainer Danny Thomas, and Richard Nixon, Raquel Welch, and Michael Caine have all lived in the neighborhood.

After a written request for an interview and many follow-up phone calls, Chagoury invited me to meet him. "We'll see if we can get along," he said. Chagoury's home is packed with art, antiques, and crystal chandeliers, and offers a staggering view across West Los Angeles to the Pacific Ocean.

As I'm taking it all in, Chagoury climbs a thickly carpeted, winding staircase to the living room to greet me. He's a stout man, dressed in a navy blue sport coat with buttons that strain against a barrel chest. His fingernails are buffed and manicured, and he has a full head of salt-and-pepper hair.

Almost immediately, he has a proposal: Do your story, but don't sell your work to a media outlet. "Do it for me," he says, offering me access and contacts -- even the chance to write a book. In exchange, I would get cash, and he would get full control of the product. I politely turn him down, but he brings up the offer several times during the interview.

"I am an industrialist," he says in lightly accented, near-perfect English. "I spend a lot of time with my family. I don't have time to do all that people say I do."
As we talk, I learn that much of what Chagoury says about himself is so out of sync with the public record and what others have told me -- even those who are friendly toward him -- that it seems he's not just in the market for positive spin, but for all-out reinvention.

When I bring up his days in Nigeria, he tells me that he detests his reputation as Abacha's middleman. "I am not in that business," he says. Rather, he has worked hard since he was a teenager, building a conglomerate called The Chagoury Group, which employs 20,000 people in Nigeria in construction, real estate development, telecommunications, and other sectors.

"I am an industrialist," he says in lightly accented, near-perfect English. "I spend a lot of time with my family. I don't have time to do all that people say I do."

"I have never bribed anyone," he says, looking me straight in the eye. "I have never had to make a crooked deal." He is absolutely sure of himself, even though he has offered me a bribe of sorts just minutes earlier.

As for Ribadu, the Nigerian investigator who says his officers nearly made that 2004 arrest on corruption charges, Chagoury says, "He's not such hot stuff." He tells me that Ribadu -- who until 2007 headed the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, an agency similar to the FBI -- was an attack-dog set against the enemies of President Olusegun Obasanjo, who appointed him.


Olusegun Obasanjo was elected president of Nigeria in 1999 on an anti-corruption platform.

Ribadu was pushed out of his job after Obasanjo left office, and says he was given the freedom to act independently during his tenure and was ousted because of his zealous prosecution of high-level officials.

Chagoury, who turns 64 this month, was born in Lagos and is the eldest of eight children. He has dual citizenship in Lebanon and the United Kingdom because of his parents' heritage and because he was born in Nigeria while it was still under British rule.

His father came to West Africa in the 1930s from the northern Lebanese town of Miziara. The elder Chagoury followed what was by then a well-worn migrant trail to Nigeria, where he traded in textiles and helped his brother in a small trucking operation.

Chagoury is part of the Lebanese diaspora, which is by some estimates several times larger than the population of Lebanon, and includes such influential members as Mexican businessman Carlos Slim, the world's third richest man, Columbian entertainer Shakira, and American activist Ralph Nader.

Like their Palestinian and Jewish neighbors, the Lebanese have scattered about the world, and Chagoury seems equally at home in Lagos or Beverly Hills. He has also maintained close ties to his parents' home town of Miziara.

Today, Miziara survives -- and even thrives -- because of Chagoury and his brothers, says Gilbert Aoun, who was Lebanon's ambassador to Nigeria during Abacha's rule. Still, nine months of the year, the mountainous settlement of some 15,000 is a ghost town, Aoun says, because most Miziarans old enough to work are employed by the Chagourys in Nigeria.

Chagoury didn't grow up rich, but he says that he always wanted the security and prestige that money brings. He went into business with his father-in-law, and later with his brother. The family established several flour mills in Benin and Nigeria, a construction company in Nigeria, and a club in Lagos.

An Indispensable Adviser

Chagoury says he met Abacha by chance on a flight to the Niger Delta city of Port Harcourt, when the future dictator was a young officer. The two struck up a friendship, and when Abacha seized power in a 1993 coup, Chagoury became the general's indispensable adviser.

General Abacha was an eccentric man and a brutal leader, who consolidated his power by declaring martial law and jailing political rivals. He kept a menagerie of exotic animals and rarely removed his sunglasses. The regime drew worldwide condemnation in 1995, when activist playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other men who had campaigned against the environmental degradation of the oil-rich Niger Delta were executed for what most observers say were trumped-up murder charges.

From his earliest days in power, Abacha set the tone for an administration that would become the most corrupt in Nigeria's history. Today, more than a decade after the dictator's death, investigators from Washington DC to the Nigerian capital of Abuja are still unraveling the web of shady dealings around Abacha's rule.

Within months of taking office in 1993, Abacha began to divert money from Nigeria's central bank to the overseas bank accounts of his family members and associates, including Chagoury's. A lawsuit brought by the Nigerian government against Abacha's heirs and associates in the United Kingdom shows that the dictator fraudulently ordered the bank transfers for national security purposes.

By the time of Abacha's death in 1998, those so-called security payments would total $2 billion, but they would represent less than half the funds that money-laundering investigators around the world estimate that Abacha and his associates stole from their country.

However, Abacha found other ways to pad his bank accounts. A $180 million bribery scheme -- the largest ever discovered as part of a U.S. Justice Department investigation -- was hatched the first year Abacha was in office.

Halliburton's Nigerian Bribes

The scheme began in the early 1990s, when Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), at the time a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation, led a joint venture that bid for a $6 billion contract to build a sprawling liquefied natural gas facility in the Niger Delta.

The group won the bid, but not before Abacha had agreed to accept a $40 million bribe that he would share with other Nigerian officials, according to Department of Justice court papers. It was the first installment of $180 million in bribes that KBR would pay, not only to officials of the Abacha regime, but to officials of the two heads of state who succeeded him.

A few months before I interviewed Chagoury, former KBR CEO Jack Stanley had pleaded guilty in a Texas courtroom to charges related to organizing the bribery scheme that went on for a decade in Nigeria, and to taking millions in kickbacks for himself. Since then, two more KBR contractors have been indicted, and Halliburton entered a guilty plea and paid the government a record fine of more than $500 million.

Chagoury denies any involvement in the bribery case, but his name surfaces in notes taken by one of the indictees, William [Wojciech] Chodan [Chaudan].
Chagoury denies any involvement in the bribery case, but his name surfaces in notes taken by one of the indictees, Chodan, who kept detailed records of so-called cultural meetings, where bribes were discussed.

One entry reads, "$250 ... to IPCO via Chagoury."

When I ask Chagoury about these records, he doesn't dispute that the note refers to a sum of $250 million, but he argues that it refers to a contract, which, he says, was legitimately awarded to one of his companies, IPCO Nigeria Limited, for construction related to the liquefied natural gas plant.

Chagoury has not been named by the Department of Justice or charged with any crime related to the KBR affair.

His work as an intermediary for Abacha went beyond business affairs. He was also deeply involved in diplomacy, even though he held no official government post. In the mid-1990s, when Nigeria came under increasing pressure from Washington to hold elections, Chagoury gained access to high-level U.S. emissaries like Jesse Jackson and Bill Richardson as well as to a number of senior State Department officials, according to Donald McHenry, a former American ambassador to the United Nations, who worked in U.S.-Nigeria diplomacy at the time.

The Clinton Connections

Chagoury, along with his wife and three of his children, were guests at a the Clinton's White House holiday dinner shortly after Chagoury gave nearly half a million dollars to a voter registration committee, Vote Now '96, according to a report in The Washington Post. (Chagoury would have been barred from donating directly to the Clinton campaign because he is not a U.S. citizen.) Since then, Chagoury and Clinton have traveled together and seen each other socially.

"Every one knows I'm friends with the Clintons," Chagoury says.

As Abacha's health began to fail in the late 1990s, Chagoury made major efforts to prop up the dictator. A State Department memo obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, entitled "The Health Watch on the Head of State Continues," shows that Chagoury appeared to have brought medical specialists and sophisticated medical equipment to the presidential residence in Abuja, while publicly downplaying the seriousness of Abacha's condition.

When Abacha died in June 1998, a second State Department memo notes that Chagoury placed an in-flight call from his private plane to the U.S. embassy in Nigeria to report that he was in touch with Nigeria's Provisional Ruling Council, which would be meeting later that day to discuss a successor to Abacha. In the phone call, Chagoury asked what governmental structure would be acceptable to U.S. officials, according to the memo.

Immediately after Abacha's death, Ribadu, then a young police investigator, says he began looking into the dictator's financial affairs. "It wasn't uncommon for Nigerian leaders to put money elsewhere," Ribadu says. "But the magnitude was beyond anybody's comprehension."

The money -- estimated at more than $4 billion -- was stashed in Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, and the Isle of Jersey in the names of dozens of individuals and companies. Ribadu argues that it was Chagoury who vouched for Abacha's sons at banks where the source of their assets might otherwise have been questioned.

Indeed, Chagoury's Swiss attorney, Luc Argand, told me that his client served as a reference for Abacha's sons at Credit Suisse. The Nigerian government eventually requested help from law enforcement around the world in tracking the stolen assets. In 2000, Chagoury was convicted in Geneva, Switzerland, of laundering money and aiding a criminal organization in connection with the billions of dollars stolen from Nigeria during the Abacha years.

Argand has insisted that Chagoury used the money for diplomatic missions on behalf of Abacha. Asked if he had records to substantiate that claim, Argand said he couldn't produce any. He also conceded that the money was "stolen by Abacha, and had to be returned."

However, Argand says that Chagoury had already decided on his own to return it. In the end, he says, his client agreed to a plea deal: Chagoury would pay a fine of a million Swiss francs and hand over $66 million to the Nigerian government. Swiss authorities promised to expunge the conviction after two years, which they have done.

In 1999, Chagoury won immunity from prosecution in a separate looted-assets case in Nigeria by agreeing to return money that he held in Swiss bank accounts. The precise amount that Chagoury returned is unclear.

Meanwhile, the hunt for Nigeria's stolen treasure continues. A panel appointed by Nigeria's current president, Umaru Yar'Adua, is currently investigating which Nigerian officials took bribes in the Halliburton case and has reportedly requested U.S. Department of Justice cooperation in the probe. However, some Nigeria watchers, including Ribadu, doubt the seriousness of the inquiry.

The Clinton Foundation did not respond to emailed questions and repeated phone calls about the nature of Bill and Hillary Clinton's relationship with Chagoury.
While the Nigerian government struggles to recoup the losses it suffered under Abacha, Chagoury has prospered and continued to win acceptance from influential people around the world.

Last year, he was knighted by the Catholic Church and inducted into the Order of St. Gregory the Great, an honor bestowed upon those who serve the church, including many who are big donors to the institution. Bob Hope, Ricardo Montalban, and Rupert Murdoch are among past recipients.

The Clinton Foundation did not respond to emailed questions and repeated phone calls about the nature of Bill and Hillary Clinton's relationship with Chagoury. Former Democratic Party chairman Terry McAuliffe, who, according to The Washington Post, was a sponsor of Chagoury's invitation to the White House in 1996, also failed to return phone calls. A spokesman for former Clinton political advisor James Carville, also a Chagoury acquaintance, said that Carville could not comment on the relationship.

And Chagoury hasn't stopped earning his fortune. Knowledgeable sources say that Chagoury controls South Atlantic Petroleum, a company that was awarded a choice oil exploration license before Abacha's death. Three years ago, the company sold a portion of its government-granted concession to the Chinese oil company, China National Offshore Oil Corporation, for $2.7 billion.

In our interview, Chagoury didn't deny that he profited from the deal, but he said rumors that former President Clinton helped make the deal happen were untrue.

Chagoury is unfazed by the crackdown by the U.S. Justice Department on foreign bribery, exemplified by the Halliburton case, and waves off the recent spate of prosecutions like an elder statesman: "You have lobbyists; we have agents," he says.

"You are never going to stop corruption," because it's favoritism, and that's human nature, which laws won't change, he tells me.

It's no wonder he is so confident. He is now free to come and go in Nigeria, while his nemesis, corruption hunter Nuhu Ribadu, left the country last year, he says, after an attempt on his life.

I hope all you in the Niger Delta see how the north and yorubas are being used by one Lebanese to continue pillaging our resources.


Nigeria must be divided.

Any of you traitors like TonyeBarcanista and omowuja are free to join Amaechi in Abuja

In July 2004, police lay in wait at an airfield in the far northeastern corner of Nigeria. Gilbert Chagoury, a Lebanese businessman and one-time adviser to the late dictator Sani Abacha, was set to touch down in his private jet. Nuhu Ribadu, then the country's top anti-corruption prosecutor, says that Chagoury was a kingpin in the corruption that defined Abacha's regime.

"You couldn't investigate corruption without looking at Chagoury," Ribadu tells me in a recent interview in California.

Six years after Abacha's death, Ribadu's officers stood ready to take Chagoury down. Ribadu says that Chagoury made it possible for Abacha to steal billions of dollars and lined his own pockets in the process. The prosecutor says he indicted Chagoury and ordered his arrest for relatively minor violations related to Chagoury's businesses so that he could later bring additional charges for his activities in the Abacha era.

But, no sooner had Chagoury's plane hit the ground, than it took off again. Ribadu says it's likely that an airport official tipped him off, and Ribadu's big catch slipped away, literally into thin air.

Chagoury was among the last of the all-powerful middlemen who served the heads of oil-rich African states, says Philippe Vasset, longtime editor of Africa Energy Intelligence, one of a series of influential energy industry newsletters. "He [Chagoury] was the gatekeeper to Abacha's presidency," Vasset says.

In many African countries, a Western entrepreneur might hand over money to a fixer or middleman, who would then pass it on to a political leader in exchange for support for a business venture. In Nigeria, Vasset explains, Chagoury was just such a figure in the mid-1990s, when Abacha ruled the country and held the key to much of the country's oil wealth.

Today, Chagoury is a diplomat representing the tiny island nation of St. Lucia. He is also a friend of former President Bill Clinton and a generous philanthropist, who, since the Abacha years, has used his money to establish respectability. He appeared near the top of the Clinton Foundation donor list in 2008 as a $1 million to $5 million contributor, according to foundation documents. (His name made the list again in 2009.)

Chagoury's contribution to the Louvre in Paris some years back was large enough for the museum to name a gallery for him and his wife. In recent years, he has put up $10 million for the construction of medical and nursing schools in Lebanon, his parents' country of origin, that also bear the Chagoury name.

Unlike his friend, the former president [Clinton], Chagoury conducts his affairs largely out of public view. He rarely talks to reporters.
Unlike his friend, the former president, Chagoury conducts his affairs largely out of public view. He rarely talks to reporters.

But on a cool day in late 2008, I headed up a gently winding road in Beverly Hills, where Chagoury's Moorish-style villa sprawls across the top of a steep canyon. The home once belonged to entertainer Danny Thomas, and Richard Nixon, Raquel Welch, and Michael Caine have all lived in the neighborhood.

After a written request for an interview and many follow-up phone calls, Chagoury invited me to meet him. "We'll see if we can get along," he said. Chagoury's home is packed with art, antiques, and crystal chandeliers, and offers a staggering view across West Los Angeles to the Pacific Ocean.

As I'm taking it all in, Chagoury climbs a thickly carpeted, winding staircase to the living room to greet me. He's a stout man, dressed in a navy blue sport coat with buttons that strain against a barrel chest. His fingernails are buffed and manicured, and he has a full head of salt-and-pepper hair.

Almost immediately, he has a proposal: Do your story, but don't sell your work to a media outlet. "Do it for me," he says, offering me access and contacts -- even the chance to write a book. In exchange, I would get cash, and he would get full control of the product. I politely turn him down, but he brings up the offer several times during the interview.

"I am an industrialist," he says in lightly accented, near-perfect English. "I spend a lot of time with my family. I don't have time to do all that people say I do."
As we talk, I learn that much of what Chagoury says about himself is so out of sync with the public record and what others have told me -- even those who are friendly toward him -- that it seems he's not just in the market for positive spin, but for all-out reinvention.

When I bring up his days in Nigeria, he tells me that he detests his reputation as Abacha's middleman. "I am not in that business," he says. Rather, he has worked hard since he was a teenager, building a conglomerate called The Chagoury Group, which employs 20,000 people in Nigeria in construction, real estate development, telecommunications, and other sectors.

"I am an industrialist," he says in lightly accented, near-perfect English. "I spend a lot of time with my family. I don't have time to do all that people say I do."

"I have never bribed anyone," he says, looking me straight in the eye. "I have never had to make a crooked deal." He is absolutely sure of himself, even though he has offered me a bribe of sorts just minutes earlier.

As for Ribadu, the Nigerian investigator who says his officers nearly made that 2004 arrest on corruption charges, Chagoury says, "He's not such hot stuff." He tells me that Ribadu -- who until 2007 headed the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, an agency similar to the FBI -- was an attack-dog set against the enemies of President Olusegun Obasanjo, who appointed him.


Olusegun Obasanjo was elected president of Nigeria in 1999 on an anti-corruption platform.

Ribadu was pushed out of his job after Obasanjo left office, and says he was given the freedom to act independently during his tenure and was ousted because of his zealous prosecution of high-level officials.

Chagoury, who turns 64 this month, was born in Lagos and is the eldest of eight children. He has dual citizenship in Lebanon and the United Kingdom because of his parents' heritage and because he was born in Nigeria while it was still under British rule.

His father came to West Africa in the 1930s from the northern Lebanese town of Miziara. The elder Chagoury followed what was by then a well-worn migrant trail to Nigeria, where he traded in textiles and helped his brother in a small trucking operation.

Chagoury is part of the Lebanese diaspora, which is by some estimates several times larger than the population of Lebanon, and includes such influential members as Mexican businessman Carlos Slim, the world's third richest man, Columbian entertainer Shakira, and American activist Ralph Nader.

Like their Palestinian and Jewish neighbors, the Lebanese have scattered about the world, and Chagoury seems equally at home in Lagos or Beverly Hills. He has also maintained close ties to his parents' home town of Miziara.

Today, Miziara survives -- and even thrives -- because of Chagoury and his brothers, says Gilbert Aoun, who was Lebanon's ambassador to Nigeria during Abacha's rule. Still, nine months of the year, the mountainous settlement of some 15,000 is a ghost town, Aoun says, because most Miziarans old enough to work are employed by the Chagourys in Nigeria.

Chagoury didn't grow up rich, but he says that he always wanted the security and prestige that money brings. He went into business with his father-in-law, and later with his brother. The family established several flour mills in Benin and Nigeria, a construction company in Nigeria, and a club in Lagos.

An Indispensable Adviser

Chagoury says he met Abacha by chance on a flight to the Niger Delta city of Port Harcourt, when the future dictator was a young officer. The two struck up a friendship, and when Abacha seized power in a 1993 coup, Chagoury became the general's indispensable adviser.

General Abacha was an eccentric man and a brutal leader, who consolidated his power by declaring martial law and jailing political rivals. He kept a menagerie of exotic animals and rarely removed his sunglasses. The regime drew worldwide condemnation in 1995, when activist playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other men who had campaigned against the environmental degradation of the oil-rich Niger Delta were executed for what most observers say were trumped-up murder charges.

From his earliest days in power, Abacha set the tone for an administration that would become the most corrupt in Nigeria's history. Today, more than a decade after the dictator's death, investigators from Washington DC to the Nigerian capital of Abuja are still unraveling the web of shady dealings around Abacha's rule.

Within months of taking office in 1993, Abacha began to divert money from Nigeria's central bank to the overseas bank accounts of his family members and associates, including Chagoury's. A lawsuit brought by the Nigerian government against Abacha's heirs and associates in the United Kingdom shows that the dictator fraudulently ordered the bank transfers for national security purposes.

By the time of Abacha's death in 1998, those so-called security payments would total $2 billion, but they would represent less than half the funds that money-laundering investigators around the world estimate that Abacha and his associates stole from their country.

However, Abacha found other ways to pad his bank accounts. A $180 million bribery scheme -- the largest ever discovered as part of a U.S. Justice Department investigation -- was hatched the first year Abacha was in office.

Halliburton's Nigerian Bribes

The scheme began in the early 1990s, when Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), at the time a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation, led a joint venture that bid for a $6 billion contract to build a sprawling liquefied natural gas facility in the Niger Delta.

The group won the bid, but not before Abacha had agreed to accept a $40 million bribe that he would share with other Nigerian officials, according to Department of Justice court papers. It was the first installment of $180 million in bribes that KBR would pay, not only to officials of the Abacha regime, but to officials of the two heads of state who succeeded him.

A few months before I interviewed Chagoury, former KBR CEO Jack Stanley had pleaded guilty in a Texas courtroom to charges related to organizing the bribery scheme that went on for a decade in Nigeria, and to taking millions in kickbacks for himself. Since then, two more KBR contractors have been indicted, and Halliburton entered a guilty plea and paid the government a record fine of more than $500 million.

Chagoury denies any involvement in the bribery case, but his name surfaces in notes taken by one of the indictees, William [Wojciech] Chodan [Chaudan].
Chagoury denies any involvement in the bribery case, but his name surfaces in notes taken by one of the indictees, Chodan, who kept detailed records of so-called cultural meetings, where bribes were discussed.

One entry reads, "$250 ... to IPCO via Chagoury."

When I ask Chagoury about these records, he doesn't dispute that the note refers to a sum of $250 million, but he argues that it refers to a contract, which, he says, was legitimately awarded to one of his companies, IPCO Nigeria Limited, for construction related to the liquefied natural gas plant.

Chagoury has not been named by the Department of Justice or charged with any crime related to the KBR affair.

His work as an intermediary for Abacha went beyond business affairs. He was also deeply involved in diplomacy, even though he held no official government post. In the mid-1990s, when Nigeria came under increasing pressure from Washington to hold elections, Chagoury gained access to high-level U.S. emissaries like Jesse Jackson and Bill Richardson as well as to a number of senior State Department officials, according to Donald McHenry, a former American ambassador to the United Nations, who worked in U.S.-Nigeria diplomacy at the time.

The Clinton Connections

Chagoury, along with his wife and three of his children, were guests at a the Clinton's White House holiday dinner shortly after Chagoury gave nearly half a million dollars to a voter registration committee, Vote Now '96, according to a report in The Washington Post. (Chagoury would have been barred from donating directly to the Clinton campaign because he is not a U.S. citizen.) Since then, Chagoury and Clinton have traveled together and seen each other socially.

"Every one knows I'm friends with the Clintons," Chagoury says.

As Abacha's health began to fail in the late 1990s, Chagoury made major efforts to prop up the dictator. A State Department memo obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, entitled "The Health Watch on the Head of State Continues," shows that Chagoury appeared to have brought medical specialists and sophisticated medical equipment to the presidential residence in Abuja, while publicly downplaying the seriousness of Abacha's condition.

When Abacha died in June 1998, a second State Department memo notes that Chagoury placed an in-flight call from his private plane to the U.S. embassy in Nigeria to report that he was in touch with Nigeria's Provisional Ruling Council, which would be meeting later that day to discuss a successor to Abacha. In the phone call, Chagoury asked what governmental structure would be acceptable to U.S. officials, according to the memo.

Immediately after Abacha's death, Ribadu, then a young police investigator, says he began looking into the dictator's financial affairs. "It wasn't uncommon for Nigerian leaders to put money elsewhere," Ribadu says. "But the magnitude was beyond anybody's comprehension."

The money -- estimated at more than $4 billion -- was stashed in Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, and the Isle of Jersey in the names of dozens of individuals and companies. Ribadu argues that it was Chagoury who vouched for Abacha's sons at banks where the source of their assets might otherwise have been questioned.

Indeed, Chagoury's Swiss attorney, Luc Argand, told me that his client served as a reference for Abacha's sons at Credit Suisse. The Nigerian government eventually requested help from law enforcement around the world in tracking the stolen assets. In 2000, Chagoury was convicted in Geneva, Switzerland, of laundering money and aiding a criminal organization in connection with the billions of dollars stolen from Nigeria during the Abacha years.

Argand has insisted that Chagoury used the money for diplomatic missions on behalf of Abacha. Asked if he had records to substantiate that claim, Argand said he couldn't produce any. He also conceded that the money was "stolen by Abacha, and had to be returned."

However, Argand says that Chagoury had already decided on his own to return it. In the end, he says, his client agreed to a plea deal: Chagoury would pay a fine of a million Swiss francs and hand over $66 million to the Nigerian government. Swiss authorities promised to expunge the conviction after two years, which they have done.

In 1999, Chagoury won immunity from prosecution in a separate looted-assets case in Nigeria by agreeing to return money that he held in Swiss bank accounts. The precise amount that Chagoury returned is unclear.

Meanwhile, the hunt for Nigeria's stolen treasure continues. A panel appointed by Nigeria's current president, Umaru Yar'Adua, is currently investigating which Nigerian officials took bribes in the Halliburton case and has reportedly requested U.S. Department of Justice cooperation in the probe. However, some Nigeria watchers, including Ribadu, doubt the seriousness of the inquiry.

The Clinton Foundation did not respond to emailed questions and repeated phone calls about the nature of Bill and Hillary Clinton's relationship with Chagoury.
While the Nigerian government struggles to recoup the losses it suffered under Abacha, Chagoury has prospered and continued to win acceptance from influential people around the world.

Last year, he was knighted by the Catholic Church and inducted into the Order of St. Gregory the Great, an honor bestowed upon those who serve the church, including many who are big donors to the institution. Bob Hope, Ricardo Montalban, and Rupert Murdoch are among past recipients.

The Clinton Foundation did not respond to emailed questions and repeated phone calls about the nature of Bill and Hillary Clinton's relationship with Chagoury. Former Democratic Party chairman Terry McAuliffe, who, according to The Washington Post, was a sponsor of Chagoury's invitation to the White House in 1996, also failed to return phone calls. A spokesman for former Clinton political advisor James Carville, also a Chagoury acquaintance, said that Carville could not comment on the relationship.

And Chagoury hasn't stopped earning his fortune. Knowledgeable sources say that Chagoury controls South Atlantic Petroleum, a company that was awarded a choice oil exploration license before Abacha's death. Three years ago, the company sold a portion of its government-granted concession to the Chinese oil company, China National Offshore Oil Corporation, for $2.7 billion.

In our interview, Chagoury didn't deny that he profited from the deal, but he said rumors that former President Clinton helped make the deal happen were untrue.

Chagoury is unfazed by the crackdown by the U.S. Justice Department on foreign bribery, exemplified by the Halliburton case, and waves off the recent spate of prosecutions like an elder statesman: "You have lobbyists; we have agents," he says.

"You are never going to stop corruption," because it's favoritism, and that's human nature, which laws won't change, he tells me.

It's no wonder he is so confident. He is now free to come and go in Nigeria, while his nemesis, corruption hunter Nuhu Ribadu, left the country last year, he says, after an attempt on his life.

OZAOEKPE:
YOU WELCOME MA

Pls take your congrats to that baby mama to a reggae musician via pms.

egift:
Poor man go find work and be productive with your life. Have a lovely day bro. Cheers!

Do not Derail this thread with your cheap skate attempt at making a living as an e-tout.

[size=18pt]Tinubu takes the notorious Chagoury brothers to Buhari for a closed door[/size]
April 21, 2015


APC leader, Ahmed Bola Tinubu, may have commenced his deft moves as he recently  brought the very notorious  Chagoury brothers to meet with the president-elect in a closed door meeting.
It was not clear what was discussed but consider the fact the Chagoury brothers, who threw in some cash for the Buhari Campaign,  are big players of sundry shades, business deals would have featured prominently.
The Lebanon brothers played a prominent role in helping the Abacha family stash billions of stolen state cash in foreign banks.
Immediately after Abacha’s death, ex EFCC czar, Nuhu Ribadu, who unsuccessfully tried to indict and arrest Chagoury in 2004,  then a young police investigator, said he began looking into the dictator’s financial affairs.
“It wasn’t uncommon for Nigerian leaders to put money elsewhere,” Ribadu says. “But the magnitude was beyond anybody’s comprehension.”
The money — estimated at more than $4 billion — was stashed in Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, and the Isle of Jersey in the names of dozens of individuals and companies. Ribadu argues that it was Chagoury who vouched for Abacha’s sons at banks where the source of their assets might otherwise have been questioned.
Indeed, Chagoury’s Swiss attorney, Luc Argand, said his client served as a reference for Abacha’s sons at Credit Suisse.
The Nigerian government eventually requested help from law enforcement around the world in tracking the stolen assets.
In 2000, Chagoury was convicted in Geneva, Switzerland, of laundering money and aiding a criminal organization in connection with the billions of dollars stolen from Nigeria during the Abacha years.
Six  years after Gen. Sani Abacha’s death, Ribadu’s officers stood ready to take  Gilbert Chagoury down. Ribadu says that Chagoury made it possible for Abacha to steal billions of dollars and lined his own pockets in the process.
The prosecutor says he indicted Chagoury and ordered his arrest for relatively minor violations related to Chagoury’s businesses so that he could later bring additional charges for his activities in the Abacha era.
Private business tycoons are not left out of the visits, Forte Oil CEO, Femi Otedola, and Oando boss Adewale Tinubu also visited Buhari last week.
Both money men donated millions of dollars to the Buhari Campaign Organisation. Speculations have it that the name of the  Oando boss has been suggested to Buhari by  Asiwaju  as the next Petroleum Minister.
Although  Chagoury denies any involvement in the Halliburton bribery case, but his name surfaced in notes taken by one of the indictees, Chodan, who kept detailed records of so-called cultural meetings, where bribes were discussed.
One entry reads, “$250 … to IPCO via Chagoury.”
When I ask Chagoury about these records, he doesn’t dispute that the note refers to a sum of $250 million, but he argues that it refers to a contract, which, he says, was legitimately awarded to one of his companies, IPCO Nigeria Limited, for construction related to the liquefied natural gas plant.
Reports say  Buhari,  however refused to have audience with  the current Comptroller-General of Customs, Abdullahi Dikko Inde,  and NSCDC boss , Ade Abolurin, who visited his residence in Daura to “pay homage.”
Yankarireporters.com learnt that the customs boss,  immediately after informing the President-Elect of his mission was advised to go back to his duty post.
Dikko, shocked by Buhari’s response tried unsuccessfully to inform the retired General of the situation at all Nigeria’s borders, seaport and the airports, but the President-elect upbraided the 55 year-old that the ideal procedure is to wait until he has been sworn in as president, describing the visit as unhealthy, unethical and disloyalty to a government he is still serving.
The visit of the current Commandant-General of the NSCDC, Ade Abolurin, was reportedly more dramatic. He  arrived Daura with top officers of the corps, photographers and some members of
According to a member of the Buhari Campaign from Katsina, “The President-Elect was having his normal quiet time when the delegation arrived”.
The corps officers led by its commandant were left outside in the scorching sun for over an hour, before the commandant and two corps officers were allowed entry into the President-elect’s visitors room.
But shortly after an aide of Buhari, said that the retired General wants him out of his residence and will not be seeing him.
Dumbfounded the corps officers left in a haste to the surprise of other delegation members outside, who were waiting and hoping to see the president-elect and take photographs with him.
A serving minister last week also sent emissaries to the president-elect in a bid to secure a private meeting.
The  deluge of top current serving government officials and visitors reaching out to General Buhari at this material time has turned his Daura home to a new Mecca.

The blood of those innocent people you sacrificed in Cross River to get the bigot's approval are haunting you.

Hillary Clinton's Nigeria record once again in the spotlight | Washington Examiner

The State Department under Clinton resisted congressional calls to designate Boko Haram as a terrorist organization.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari's visit to Washington, D.C., Monday to discuss the fight against Boko Haram has prompted critics to again question why Hillary Clinton refused to label the West African insurgents as terrorists during her State Department tenure.

Buhari and President Obama discussed U.S. support of Nigerian counterterrorism efforts, which was made possible by Secretary of State John Kerry's decision to place Boko Haram on the terrorist watch list in late 2013, just months after Clinton left office.

The State Department under Clinton resisted congressional calls to designate Boko Haram as a terrorist organization.

Robert Jackson, acting assistant secretary of state for African affairs, testified before Congress in May of last year that the agency could have acted sooner on Boko Haram.


Clinton's ties to Gilbert Chagoury, a prominent Nigerian businessman and Clinton Foundation supporter, have prompted at least one member of Congress to question the motives behind her decision not to slap Boko Haram with a Foreign Terrorist Organization classification.

Sen. David Vitter, R-La., wrote a letter to Kerry in March asking the State Department to turn over emails in which Clinton discussed Boko Haram.

"[G]iven the drastic foothold Boko Haram was allowed to gain prior to being designated an FTO, the nexus between the Department's decision against designating Boko Haram as an FTO and connections to outside groups should be brought forward," Vitter wrote.

Vitter questioned whether the Clinton's relationship with Chagoury influenced her decision against labeling Boko Haram a terrorist group.

He noted Bill Clinton had participated in events with Chagoury while his wife was secretary of state, and that the Nigerian land developer had "previously agreed to a $66 million plea deal during international investigation into corruption charges against him."


The Clinton Foundation's acceptance of donations from Nigerian companies has raised red flags in the past.

For example, the First Bank of Nigeria, one of the country's largest financial institutions, gave as much as $25,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

The son of the former chairman of the First Bank of Nigeria was sentenced to life in prison after attempting to blow up a Detroit-bound passenger flight on Christmas Day 2009.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Alhaji Mutallab's son, was dubbed the "underwear bomber" after authorities discovered explosives hidden in his underwear.

Bill Clinton accepted between $500,000 and $1 million from a Nigerian newspaper publisher in 2012 to speak at an event in Lagos.


The money went straight into the Clinton Foundation, donor records show.

Procter & Gamble's Nigeria operation won a prestigious State Department award in 2011. The company donated between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation.

Hillary Clinton personally presented the company with the award at a ceremony in Washington, D.C.

Nestle Nigeria, a food manufacturing company, also donated to the Clinton Foundation.

Hillary Clinton reportedly invited Buhari to meet with her in 2009, years before the Nigerian president assumed office.

Powerful oil corporations have played a role in shaping Nigeria's policy. Many of the energy conglomerates have also enjoyed close ties to the Clintons.

Royal Dutch Shell, a major oil company and Clinton Foundation donor, reportedly infiltrated the Nigerian government in its efforts to dominate the energy sector there.

Leaked diplomatic cables suggest State Department officials received intelligence updates from Shell executives in Nigeria and were concerned about the effects of the deteriorating security situation on the country's oil industry.

The Nigerian ambassador under Hillary Clinton met with executives from Shell and other corporations — including fellow foundation donors Chevron, Schlumberger and ExxonMobil — in 2009 and advised them on ways to lobby the Nigerian government in their favor.

One of the reasons Hillary Clinton's officials cited for refusing to label the group as terrorists was "the possibility that doing so might heighten threats against U.S. and Western interests," according to CNN.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/hillary-clintons-nigeria-record-once-again-in-the-spotlight/article/2568609

[size=28pt]Apparatus and method for remotely monitoring and altering brain waves
US 3951134 A[/size]

ABSTRACT
Apparatus for and method of sensing brain waves at a position remote from a subject whereby electromagnetic signals of different frequencies are simultaneously transmitted to the brain of the subject in which the signals interfere with one another to yield a waveform which is modulated by the subject's brain waves. The interference waveform which is representative of the brain wave activity is re-transmitted by the brain to a receiver where it is demodulated and amplified. The demodulated waveform is then displayed for visual viewing and routed to a computer for further processing and analysis. The demodulated waveform also can be used to produce a compensating signal which is transmitted back to the brain to effect a desired change in electrical activity therein.


What is claimed is:
1. Brain wave monitoring apparatus comprising means for producing a base frequency signal, means for producing a first signal having a frequency related to that of the base frequency and at a predetermined phase related thereto, means for transmitting both said base frequency and said first signals to the brain of the subject being monitored, means for receiving a second signal transmitted by the brain of the subject being monitored in response to both said base frequency and said first signals, mixing means for producing from said base frequency signal and said received second signal a response signal having a frequency related to that of the base frequency, and
means for interpreting said response signal.

2. Apparatus as in claim 1 where said receiving means comprises means for isolating the transmitted signals from the received second signals.

3. Apparatus as in claim 2 further comprising a band pass filter with an input connected to said isolating means and an output connected to said mixing means.

4. Apparatus as in claim 1 further comprising means for amplifying said response signal.

5. Apparatus as in claim 4 further comprising means for demodulating said amplified response signal.

6. Apparatus as in claim 5 further comprising interpreting means connected to the output of said demodulator means.

7. Apparatus according to claim 1 further comprising
means for producing an electromagnetic wave control signal dependent on said response signal, and
means for transmitting said control signal to the brain of said subject.

8. Apparatus as in claim 7 wherein said transmitting means comprises means for directing the electromagnetic wave control signal to a predetermined part of the brain.

9. A process for monitoring brain wave activity of a subject comprising the steps of
transmitting at least two electromagnetic energy signals of different frequencies to the brain of the subject being monitored,
receiving an electromagnetic energy signal resulting from the mixing of said two signals in the brain modulated by the brain wave activity and retransmitted by the brain in response to said transmitted energy signals, and,
interpreting said received signal.

10. A process as in claim 9 further comprising the step of transmitting a further electromagnetic wave signal to the brain to vary the brain wave activity.

11. A process as in claim 10 wherein the step of transmitting the further signals comprises obtaining a standard signal, comparing said received electromagnetic energy signals with said standard signal, producing a compensating signal corresponding to the comparison between said received electrogagnetic energy signals and the standard signal, and transmitting the compensating signals to the brain of the subject being monitored.

DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Medical science has found brain waves to be a useful barometer of organic functions. Measurements of electrical activity in the brain have been instrumental in detecting physical and psychic disorder, measuring stress, determining sleep patterns, and monitoring body metabolism.

The present art for measurement of brain waves employs electroencephalographs including probes with sensors which are attached to the skull of the subject under study at points proximate to the regions of the brain being monitored. Electrical contact between the sensors and apparatus employed to process the detected brain waves is maintained by a plurality of wires extending from the sensors to the apparatus. The necessity for physically attaching the measuring apparatus to the subject imposes several limitations on the measurement process. The subject may experience discomfort, particulary if the measurements are to be made over extended periods of time. His bodily movements are restricted and he is generally confined to the immediate vicinity of the measuring apparatus. Furthermore, measurements cannot be made while the subject is conscious without his awareness. The comprehensiveness of the measurements is also limited since the finite number of probes employed to monitor local regions of brain wave activity do not permit observation of the total brain wave profile in a single test.

iamrealdeji:
this man is a sadist. I'm not an apc supporter anymore but I have to say the truth. This woman is very beautiful,yes middle aged but prettier than your mother and your girlfriend put together

I am a sadist because I choose not to stop and pause on the woman's looks?

I am.a sadist because the Arab looking woman is much beautiful than my mum and girlfriend combined according to you?

Do you see how superficial and daft you sound?

Flirtyjane:
Na person mama you dey abuse so o

You get your own mother o

I hope your mile don achieve pass am for you to dey cause the woman

Where did I abuse her?

**** I said this crap does not belong here.

We don't celebrate ministers and politicians based on their looks.

Maybe in yeyebrity section but definitely not here.

****