LONDON – (AP) — A former governor of Nigeria’s oil-rich Delta state was sentenced in Britain on Tuesday to 13 years in prison for fraud and money-laundering.
James Ibori had admitted in a London court in February to fraud and money-laundering involving sums of approximately 50 million pounds ($79 million). He was accused of stealing $250 million from the public purse and funneling much of the stolen funds to banks in England to fund a lavish lifestyle of private jets and luxury cars.
“During his two terms as governor of Delta State, James Ibori deliberately and systematically defrauded the people whose interests he had been elected to represent,” Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement after the sentencing at London’s Southwark Crown Court. “Very significant cooperation was secured from many countries worldwide to enable us to bring this prosecution.”
Ibori’s guilty pleas capped an inquiry which began in association with Nigerian anti-corruption investigators in 2005. Ibori was immune from prosecution in Nigeria between 1999 and 2007 when he was serving as governor of Delta state, police said.
Prosecutors and police have said Ibori used the money to buy houses in London and Johannesburg, a fleet of armored Land Rovers, and a $20 million private jet. He racked up credit card bills of $200,000 a month.
Nigeria’s anti-graft investigators, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, had arrested Ibori in 2007, and police in London got a court order to freeze U.K. assets of 35 million pounds which allegedly belonged to him.
In 2009, a court in Ibori’s home town of Asaba, Nigeria, dismissed 170 charges of corruption against him.
The case was reopened in 2010 by Nigerian investigators, but Ibori evaded arrest and fled to Dubai. He was detained there at the request of British police and extradited to London in 2011.
Ibori — who prosecutors said is 49 years old, but according to the birth date he used in Nigeria is 53 — was charged in Britain with a string of offenses, including siphoning money from the Delta state government to line his own pockets.
British prosecutors had previously won convictions against Ibori’s wife, Theresa; his sister, Christine Ibori-Ibie; his mistress, Udoamaka Oniugbo; his lawyer, Bhadresh Gohil; a financial agent, Daniel Benedict McCann; and corporate financier Lambertus De Boer.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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