Impounded jet key to major graft scandal

A luxury private aircraft landed at Montréal-Trudeau International Airport in Canada on 29 May. The jet, with the tail number M-MYNA was branded in the green and white colours of Nigeria’s flag. Babatunde Johnson, an asset recovery lawyer representing the Nigerian Government, had been monitoring the plane on its journey from Dubai and he urged the Canadian authorities to impound the plane. ‘We had just a few hours to get a legal team in place on the ground to file the injunction. It was 3am in Nigeria when I made a statement to the judge via video link,’ he said. The order was granted. The Mail & Guardian reports that the Bombardier 6000 is at the centre of one of Nigeria’s biggest corruption scandals. In 1998, during the last weeks of Sani Abacha’s military regime, then-Oil Minister Dan Etete effectively awarded the oil prospecting rights to the huge OPL-245 block to a company called Malabu Oil and Gas. After Abacha’s sudden death, Etete retained the rights as a private citizen until he offloaded them to oil giants Shell and Eni in 2011 for a combined $1.3bn. Investigators allege about $336m then trickled down to Etete via several bank accounts, and that one of the first payments he made ($54m) was the main instalment on the seized aircraft. The entire OPL-245 deal is now subject to a corruption trial in Italy, where Etete is an accused, together with alleged middlemen Eni and Shell, and several of their executives.