Ike Abonyi
17 May 2009
Abuja — Nigerians anxious to see the Federal Government unveil the identity of officials behind the Halliburton bribery scandal may have to wait a bit longer as the Presidency at the weekend said records of the transactions need expert decoding and high level intelligence work.
Special Adviser to the President on Media and Communication, Mr. Olusegun Adeniyi, yesterday told THISDAY that the Halliburton case was so damming that Yar'Adua does not want to play politics with it but to follow the process and produce watertight evidence against suspects before bringing them to the public.
The Presidential spokesman said: "Perhaps, if Yar'Adua was another person, he could have used the Halliburton scandal to make a public show about fighting corruption, and probably grandstand but at the end, such would achieve nothing. From the little I know about the Halliburton scandal, it is a potent political weapon but that is not Yar'Adua's way.
"He wants to ensure that justice is done in this case and that includes ensuring that innocent people are not smeared in the process of bringing the perpetrators of the crime to justice and that takes time and meticulous efforts", he said.
Adeniyi further said most of the transactions on the Halliburton case was done in coded language and would require thorough intelligence work to get out names of those involved.
"As fascinating as the tales in this file are, you do not find a single name of any Nigerian official mentioned there. What you find are coded names like Contractor A, Consultant B, Madeira Company 1 and so on and so forth. And even in areas dealing with the sharing of loot, names are not mentioned, what you have are phrases like top officials of the executive branch. Let me read some sections to you so you can understand the dilemma that led to setting up of the Okiro Panel now yielding results:
"Stanley and his co-conspirators agreed that Joint Venture would hire Consulting Company A to pay bribes to high-level Nigerian government officials, including top-level executive branch officials, and Consulting Company B to pay bribes to lower level Nigerian government officials, including employees of Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) Ltd, in exchange for the officials' assistance in obtaining and retaining contracts to build the Bonny Island Project.
"Stanley and his co-conspirators caused Madeira Company 3 to execute consulting contracts with Consulting Company A and Consulting Company B providing for the payment of tens of millions of dollars in consulting fees in exchange for vaguely described marketing and advisory services, when in fact the primary purpose of the contracts was to facilitate the payment of bribes to Nigerian government officials.
"Prior to NLNG's award to Joint Venture of the various EPC contracts, Stanley and other co-conspirators met with three successive holders of a top-level office in the executive branch of the Government of Nigeria and negotiated with the office holders' representatives regarding the amount of the bribes that Joint Venture would pay to the Nigerian government officials.
"Stanley and his co-conspirators caused wire transfers totalling approximately $132 million from Madeira Company 3's bank account in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, to bank accounts in New York, to be further credited to bank accounts in Switzerland and Monaco controlled by Consultant A for Consultant A to use to bribe Nigerian government officials.
"Stanley and his co-conspirators caused wire transfers totalling over $50 million from Madeira Company 3's bank account in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, to Consulting Company B's bank account in Japan for Consulting Company B to use to bribe Nigerian government officials."
Adeniyi also said that it was this dilemma that made Yar'Adua to set up the Okiro panel which has been decoding the names and making some arrests.
He wondered how anyone can identify who got what under such coded disclosures like:
"On or about November 2, 1994, Consultant A told Salesperson A that he had spoken with a senior official of the Ministry of Petroleum, that Consultant A's fee would be $60 million, that the first top-level executive branch official of the Government of Nigeria would get $40-45 million of the fee, that other Nigerian government officials would get $15-20 million of that fee, and that there would be a meeting between Stanley and the first top-level Nigerian executive branch official before any written agreement between Joint Venture and Consultant A.
"On or about November 30, 1994, Stanley and other co-conspirators met in Abuja, Nigeria, with the first top-level executive branch official of the Government of Nigeria to verify that the official was satisfied with Joint Venture using Consultant A as its agent and to confirm that the official wanted Joint Venture to negotiate with the senior official of the Ministry of Petroleum the bribes to Nigerian government officials.
"On or about March 20, 1995, Madeira Company 3 entered into an agreement with Consulting Company A providing, among other things, that Madeira Company 3 would pay $60 million to Consulting Company A if Joint Venture was awarded a contract, Trains 1 and 2 of the Bonny Island Project. On or about December 15, 1995, Madeira Company 3 wire transferred $1542 million to Consulting Company A, via a correspondent bank account in New York, New York, in payment of Consulting Company A's first invoice under the consulting agreement for Trains 1 and 2.
"On or about April 9, 1996, Madeira Company 3 entered into an agreement with Consulting Company B whereby it agreed to pay Consulting Company B $29 million for assisting Joint Venture in winning the contract to build Trains 1 and 2 of the Bonny Island Project."
He said that the Okiro panel is aimed at helping Government know the actual people involved, who took what amount, when and how.
He disclosed that because nothing significant can be achieved without the cooperation of USA, France, UK and Switzerland, the Minister of Justice and Attorney General has been on top of it trying to get the entire necessary documents from these countries.
On the scandal rocking the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) now before the court, the Presidential spokesman said Yar'Adua was saddened by the revelation especially with the involvement of members of the National Assembly. He wondered how the suspects would be able to explain what happened given the revelations on ground.
"I don't know how the suspects will explain what they did. In one day on December 17 last year, a total of 158 contracts were awarded mainly to unregistered companies and without following any due process.
"Thirteen days later on December 30, a sum, totaling about N5.2billion was paid with the cheques broken into two installments of 15 per cent and 85 per cent. Everything about that transaction smells corruption. You find a situation where in one day, a young girl signed contract documents and collected cheques for hundreds of millions of naira on behalf of nine different companies, which have the same address, and the same GSM number on their letter headed papers," he further explained.
When asked if the President's press conference last Tuesday was the beginning of a new spirit in the fight against corruption, Adeniyi said: "Nothing has changed. Yar'Adua remains true to his conviction that the best way to fight corruption is to use the law rather than drama. But unfortunately, what some Nigerians want is entertainment.
"I am sure if the President gets the security agencies to arrest some of his former governor-colleagues, or perhaps even some of the serving ones using subterfuge, even when there are no evidence that can stand up in the court of law, he will be applauded as fighting corruption.
"You see, many people talk about the former governors but when you look at the quantum of money at the federal level, it is much more than that of the entire 36 states combined yet nobody has looked at what happens with that money.
"For example, I recall the money allegedly misappropriated by Mr. Joshua Dariye that led to his arrest and subsequent kangaroo impeachment is about N800 million from the ecological fund most of which as it even came out then were allegedly shared with some party big wigs in Abuja at that time. We all know what happened to Dariye.
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