Ibori's Appeal Over £102 Million Asset Seizure Fails

The UK Court of Appeal has turned down former Edo State Governor James Ibori's appeal against a £101.5 million confiscation order linked to money from crime.

In a ruling made on Tuesday, the court did not accept Mr Ibori's claim that it was unfair to adjust the value of money in frozen bank accounts for inflation when deciding how much he must forfeit.

The three-judge panel, which included Justice Andrew Popplewell, Justice Simon Bryan, and Judge Nicholas Dean, stated that the inflation adjustment was reasonable under the law regarding confiscation.

Mr Ibori, who was found guilty of fraud and money laundering in the UK, wanted to reduce the order by about £4.3 million, from £101.51 million to about £97.21 million. He argued against the adjustment applied to some bank accounts.

The court stated that there was nothing unfair about applying the adjustment to assets under a restraint order, even if their value did not increase as much as inflation.

"There is nothing disproportionate in applying the CVM uplift to assets subject to a restraint order merely because they have not increased in value by as much as the CVM, or at all, when restrained," the judges said.

CVM means the "change in value" of money, which adjusts for inflation when courts assess the worth of criminal proceeds for confiscation.

Mr Ibori, who was jailed for 13 years in April 2012 after admitting to 10 counts of fraud and money laundering, said the inflation adjustment on money in frozen accounts was an unfair intrusion on his property rights under the European Convention on Human Rights.

His legal team argued that he could not use the frozen money to earn returns or grow its value. They claimed that making him pay the adjusted amount would punish him for profits he could not make.

The court rejected this point. They said the adjustment was part of the law for valuing criminal proceeds at the time they were acquired, and it ensured that confiscation orders matched their current value.

The judges also noted that the restraint order was a result of Mr Ibori's criminal actions and the risk that he might hide assets to avoid confiscation.

They said Mr Ibori could have avoided the effect of the restraint order if he had admitted to his criminal proceeds and returned them early.

The court pointed out that Mr Ibori's choices were key to their decision, especially his refusal to cooperate in the confiscation process. The judges added that he could have avoided the restraint order's impact on his Nigerian bank accounts if he had accepted that the money was from crime and agreed to hand it over to the Crown.

"The very lengthy delay in this case was entirely Mr Ibori's fault in his persistent resistance to the making of the order," the judges said.

They also mentioned that it did not matter if he had to pay the adjusted amount from other assets.

The judges explained that confiscation law required him to pay the value of the criminal benefit he gained from available assets, whether those were proceeds of crime or legally acquired.

They ruled that the law required him to pay the value of the criminal benefit when it was gained, even if he no longer had the original proceeds or their full inflation-adjusted value.

"For these reasons Mr Ibori's appeal is dismissed," the court concluded.

The appeal concerned two groups of assets mentioned in the confiscation proceedings.

The first group involved four Nigerian bank accounts, which Mr Ibori's lawyers claimed did not earn interest. The inflation adjustment for those accounts was £10,265.17.

The court found that the evidence did not clearly show when the accounts were frozen or the exact period covered by the adjustment. They believed it was likely that the accounts were accessible to Mr Ibori for years after the frauds.

The second group included seven bank accounts held by investment companies in Liechtenstein, Hong Kong, Austria, and Nigeria, totaling £12.49 million.

The court decided that those accounts were not part of the criminal benefit used to calculate the confiscation order. Instead, the relevant benefit was the money paid into three Access Bank accounts in Nigeria in 2006.

The judges stated that the Crown had traced the money through a complicated web of transactions and companies, but the later accounts identified by Mr Ibori were not what the confiscation amount was based on.

His argument about those accounts was deemed mistaken by the court.

Mr Ibori governed oil-rich Delta State from 1999 to 2007.

The UK Court of Appeal noted that he intentionally and systematically defrauded the people he was elected to serve, with the money laundered through companies and bank accounts worldwide.

The fraud included inflated contracts for building a sports track and supplying vehicles to the Delta State Government, along with misusing public funds for his personal gain.

The case also dealt with the sale of Delta State's shares in V Mobile, a Nigerian telecom company. The court found that companies set up to advise on and negotiate the sale received fees that were misdirected to the main beneficiaries of the fraud, mainly Mr Ibori and another governor.

Mr Ibori was extradited from the United Arab Emirates to the UK in April 2011 to face charges. He pleaded guilty to offenses including conspiracy to defraud and money laundering and was sentenced to 13 years in prison on April 17, 2012.

He was sent back to Nigeria in December 2016 after finishing his sentence.

Mr Ibori still holds political influence in the state even after more than a decade since he was convicted of defrauding the state.

PREMIUM TIMES had earlier reported that in July 2023, a UK court ordered him to forfeit £101.5 million, which represented the criminal benefit determined by the court, after years of confiscation proceedings.

The confiscation process began with a restraint order first given in 2007 and later renewed in 2008 under the relevant legal framework. The proceedings went on for years, with the main hearing in 2020 and the court issuing its main findings in October 2022 before the final confiscation order in July 2023.

Mr Ibori's appeal only challenged the inflation adjustment applied in the confiscation calculation.

The Court of Appeal has now dismissed that challenge, keeping the £101.51 million order unchanged.