The U.S. Justice of Department on Friday filed a lawsuit seeking to recover assets that include a $50 million Manhattan apartment and an $80 million yacht, The Galactica, that it said were bought using money generated from a scheme to pay millions of dollars in bribes to a former Nigerian oil minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke.
Prosecutors claim that the businessmen, Kolawole Aluko and Olajide Omokore, laundered money through the US by purchasing lavish assets and serving as fronts to Alison-Madueke. The $50 million New York condo is at One57, located opposite Carnegie Hall in midtown Manhattan. The building currently holds the record for the most-expensive residential sale in New York following a $100.5 million apartment purchase in 2014.
Aluko’s $50 million condo is the 8th most expensive in the building, but following a loan default, his mortgage lenders are set to auction the apartment on July 19. Aluko is also said to have purchased the $80 million 65-meter yacht, the Galactica Star.
The yacht and penthouse are not the only items under scrutiny by the US authorities.
The former petroleum minister had warned Aluko against purchasing the yacht, "If you want to hire a yacht, you lease it for two weeks or whatever. You don’t go and sink funds into it at this time when Nigerian oil and gas sector is under all kinds of watch,” she said to Aluko in a recorded conversation.
But her warning was not heeded as Aluko went on to buy Galactica Star, a luxury yacht, for $80million. The civil lawsuit alleged that the two Nigerian businessmen conspired with others to pay bribes to the minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, who oversaw Nigeria’s state-owned oil company, the NNPC.
In return the US government alleges that Alison-Madueke used her influence to steer lucrative contracts from a subsidiary of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation to award Strategic Alliance Agreements (SAAs) to two shell companies created by Aluko and Omokore: Atlantic Energy Drilling Concepts Nigeria Ltd. and Atlantic Energy Brass Development Ltd. (the Atlantic Companies).
According to the filed notice, between August 2011 and January 2014, Aluko and his company Tracon investments Ltd made £537,922 in rental payments for two central London residences both located at 22 St. Edmunds. It said that flat 19 of London NW8 7QQ was occupied by Diezani, while flat 6 was occupied by Diezani’s mother at the time.
The document said the favours influenced her award of Forcados SAAs to Aluko’s Atlantic Energy Drilling Concepts (AEDC), a company incorporated in Nigeria. It also said between December 2012 and July 2014, Aluko and Tekna, another company owned by him, paid £393,274 for car hire. Omokore and Energy Property Development Ltd paid at least £4,424 to the chauffeur company, the notice said. The duo are currently facing several fraud charges by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission are in trouble in the United States.
In January 2011, the Nigerian businessmen and unidentified co-conspirators bought a Buckinghamshire home known as “The Falls” for £3.25m. Two months later, as Mr Aluko was meeting with Nigerian oil officials to discuss a contract, he arranged to buy two properties near London’s Regent’s Parks: a £1.7m home at 39 Chester Close and 58 Harley House on the Marylebone Road for £2.8m.
The first property, upgraded with an elevator and new stone flooring and countertops, was intended for the use of Ms Alison-Madueke’s mother and her son, according to the complaint. The men that month also purchased a £3.7m flat at 83-86 Prince Albert Road for the oil minister.
Ms Alison-Madueke appears to have favoured furniture stores in the Houston area, which she patronised on periodic visits to the US oil industry capital. On a single day in May 2012, Mr Aluko wired $461,500 from a Swiss bank account to one furniture store and spent an additional $262,091 at a second on the oil minister’s behalf, the complaint says.
The case was brought as part of DoJ’s kleptocracy asset recovery initiative, the Financial Times.
