I only got N39 billion from fraudulent Malabu deal- Etete tells British court Nigeria’s Attorney General played a prominent role in the deal. In a desperate attempt to muddle-up facts, convicted felon, Dan Etete, has told a British High Court that he is not the owner of Malabu Oil and Gas and thus not the recipient of the $1.1 billion (N173 billion) fraudulently transferred to Malabu by the Goodluck Jonathan administration. The money was paid by oil giants, Shell and Eni, through the federal government, to Malabu. Mr. Etete, a former minister of petroleum, told the court in a testimony he gave on a breach of contract suit brought against him over the sale of the controversial oil block OPL 245 that he only made N37.5 billion ($250 million) working as a consultant for Malabu, the Economist is reporting. PREMIUM TIMES had reported how Mr. Etete is the sole signatory into the bank accounts that the federal government paid about $800 million (N126 billion) of the oil bloc sale into. However, Mr. Etete, who was convicted for money laundering in France in 2007, immediately contradicted himself in the same testimony when he admitted to being the sole signatory to Malabu’s account and couldn’t provide any evidence of other shareholders. “I put my blood, I put my life into this oil block,” he said yet he denied owning OPL245. When presented with a transcript of a recording where he said: “It’s my block” Mr. Etete denied it claiming the transcript was inaccurate. Malabu’s Etete-appointed company secretary, Rasky Gbinigie, who claimed to be a “family friend” of Mr. Etete insisted that he had “lost the firm’s copy of the register of shareholders and all minutes of meetings, that there was no written correspondence between him, the directors and the shareholders, and that he had no documents to verify who put up the company’s original share capital.” Mr. Etete also admitted in the court, what PREMIUM TIMES investigations had revealed, that the infamous Kweku Amafegha who was named as Malabu’s “nominee director” was an alias he uses constantly. According to him, he had open bank accounts in the past that he always used when he went out for secret missions internationally. PREMIUM TIMES had exclusively reported how Mr. Etete, then Petroleum Minister in 1998, violated Nigerian laws by creating a fictional character, Mr. Amafegha, to be a shareholder in a newly formed company, Malabu. He then awarded two oil blocs, including the disputed OPL 245, to the company; which also had Mohammed Sani, son of then military dictator, Sani Abacha, as a shareholder. Nondescript businessman, Zubelum Obi, owner of oil consulting firm, Energy Venture Partners Limited, EVP, who is claiming a N30 billion ($200 million) compensation for acting as middleman in the sales of oil block OPL 245, brought the breach of contract suit against Mr. Etete.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 14:49:19 +0000
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