Post #201

🇳🇬Africa's Most Ambitious Oil Bribe [ Budget Hole ] When a person buys something at the price of X and sells it at the price of X2, this is called a business. It can be X3, even X4. X10 already starts to seem suspicious, especially if the buyer is the government. However, what about X500? 🌟OPL 245 is a deep-water oil block in the Niger Delta. Estimates say it holds about 9 billion barrels of crude, close to a quarter of Nigeria’s proven reserves. In 1998-2011 it became an object of one of Africa's most ambitious bribery schemes. It started in 1998, during the military era of General Sani Abacha, when the OPL 245 was acquiered by a company called Malabu Oil & Gas, owned by the then oil minister Dan Etete, for a miserable $20 million, of which he only paid around $2M. A new government revoked Malabu’s OPL 245 licence in 2001 and reassigned the block to Shell, which triggered years of legal battles between Malabu, Shell (and later Eni) and the Nigerian state. In 2011 Nigeria's new President Goodluck Jonathan pushed for a final solution. Malabu agreed to give up OPL 245 to the government for $1.092 billion. Shell and Eni in turn agreed to pay to the government the same $1.092 billion for the block, plus a $210 million bonus. ➡️The deal may seem unfair, as Dan Etete got the block almost for free and then sold it back to the state for $1.1B. In fact, it was even worse. When Shell and Eni sent their money to the Nigerian government's account in JP Morgan, some obscure manipulations on the part of the then office holders took place - and the bank was instructed to transfer around $875 million to accounts controlled by Malabu. ➡️Malabu did tried to return the money back to the officials - but not in the way it should have. Once the money reached Malabu, Dan Etete began to cash it out - all in order to remunerate the country's top leadership for their support via his middleman entrepreneur Aliyu Abubakar. The money could have been intended for the then President Jonathan, the country's Attorney General, the Minister of Petroleum and the National Security Adviser. The bribe case around OPL 245 has been brought before Italian, English and Nigerian courts. A criminal trial in Milan ended in 2021 with the acquittal of Shell, Eni and all managers. In London the High Court dismissed Nigeria’s claim against JPMorgan. In Abuja a court in 2024 discharged former Attorney General Mohammed Adoke and others having found the evidence not strong enough. Across all of these cases, no senior official in Nigeria and no executive in the companies has received a final prison sentence for OPL 245. The oilfield still has no production. #BudgetHole Devils Below