The Nigerian Government has informed a court in London, United Kingdom, that a former Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mohammed Adoke, contacted JP Morgan through phone call and email.
The government said this while briefing the High Court of Justice Business and Property Courts of England and Wales Admiralty and Commercial Court in a suit it instituted against JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A. explaining how Adoke benefitted from the OPL 245 deal.
This submission by the Nigerian Government is coming despite the fact that the government is prosecuting the Chairman of Human and Environmental Development Agenda (HEDA) Resource Centre, Olanrewaju Suraju, of forgery of emails.
The government in its suit against Suraju claimed he forged an email to implicate Adoke in the OPL 245 saga while also claiming that Suraju also forged and circulated the audio of a phone interview said to have been between Adoke and JP Morgan.
However, the government while briefing the court said Adoke contacted JP Morgan repeatedly and also sent an email using the mail of Aliyu Abubakar’s shell company A Group.
In a court document exclusively obtained by SaharaReporters, the Nigerian Government reaffirmed that Adoke telephoned the bank JP Morgan and even sent emails severally using the [email protected] email address.
The Nigerian Government also stated that Adoke acted while he was no longer in the ministerial position, an act linked to impersonation and fraud.
The Nigerian Government said, “As set out in section C below, Adoke also contacted JPM repeatedly, and wrote to the English Commercial Court, in relation to the 2011 Payments: he telephoned Bayo Osolake on 20 June 2011 and sent him the Resolution Agreements from [email protected] on 21 June 2011, each while he was not in ministerial office; he wrote to Steel J on 25 July 2011; and he sent a further letter to JPM on 10 August 2011 (copied to [email protected]).
“He also wrote directly to BML in Lebanon on 5 August 2011, seeking to persuade BML to accept the payment of funds to Malabu.”
Justifying Adoke’s connection to the email address, Nigerian Government told the UK Court that Adoke has publicly referred to one Aliyu Abubakar as his long term ally.
Abubakar is also linked to the OPL245 deal and reported to have received hundreds of millions of dollars through A Group, a company owned and/or controlled by Abubakar.
He is also publicly found to be corrupt by the English court.
“In his autobiography ‘The Burden of Service’, Adoke has admitted that Aliyu Abubakar was a long-standing acquaintance of his.234 As set out above, Aliyu Abubakar’s shell companies received all of the $401m proceeds of OPL 245 that were paid into Malabu’s account with First Bank Nigeria. Of this, $157m was paid to Aliyu Abubakar’s shell company A Group. Given that Adoke corresponded with JPM in 2011 using A Group’s email address, and A Group subsequently received $157m from the proceeds of the OPL 245 deal, it is to be inferred that some of that money was destined for Adoke,” the Nigerian Government said in its briefing to the UK court.
