LAGOS OCTOBER 7TH (URHOBOTODAY)-Mr. Ivan Krolic, lead counsel to Mr. James Onanefe Ibori, has told the Southwark, London court, that the British Court lacks the power and jurisdiction to determine and reach a conclusion for Nigeria’s Code of Conduct Bureau on which assets of the former Delta State Governor to confiscate – over assets declared or undeclared in Nigeria, an independent nation.
The British Crown prosecution, among other allegations, have accused James Ibori of non-declaration or false declaration of his assets as required by Nigeria’s Code of Conduct Bureau during his time as Governor of Delta State.
As the legal battle in the assets confiscation hearing of the former governor enters its final stage, the British crown prosecution in their arguments have asked the British court to confiscate the assets of the former governor as he, James Ibori, has breached Nigeria’s Code of Conduct Bureau’s statutory requirements on assets declaration. The crown’s lead prosecutor, Sasha Wass asking for the confiscation of every single penny above the sum of Ibori’s emoluments as Governor said: “every asset over and above that which was declared and which was referable to his (Ibori) level of salary can be shown to be the proceeds of his criminal conduct, namely fraud and corruption”.
Ibori’s lawyer firmly opposed that stance. In a firm manner and looking straight into the British Judge Anthony Pitts’s eyes, Krolic said “even where there is a legal obligation to make declaration of income or assets, the failure to make any such declaration or making of false declaration (if such exists) cannot cause the property to be confiscated because “this cannot turn otherwise legitimately acquired assets into criminal property, since this procedure requires the intervention of a third party, Nigeria’s Code of Conduct Bureau. And with the unknown outcome of the Bureau’s input, it is not possible for an English court to reach any conclusion about the attitude of Nigeria’s Code of Conduct Bureau to issues as whether undeclared property held in a discretionary trust would constitute breach of the Bureau’s code of conduct.
Krolic added: “in any event, these procedures are those of the of the Federal Government of Nigeria and thus, any forfeiture would benefit the Federal Government of Nigeria and non-declaration could not constitute a defrauding of Delta State, a necessary provenance in these proceedings”.
Krolic had earlier told the court that despite Nigeria’s anti graft agency, the EFCC’s and British Metropolitan police’s arrest and detention of the officials of Delta State Government including its Accountant-General between 2005 and October 2007, the EFCC and the British Police did not have any evidence that Delta State was defrauded by James Ibori or that Delta State funds could be traced to accounts of James Ibori except for his salary. And this is an incontestable fact”, he said nodding his head repeatedly for effect.

Relying on the evidence given before the crown court by EFCC’s former chairman, Nuhu Ribadu, where he, said “over the eight years of James Ibori’s governorship, approximately half of Delta State revenues of $1billion were either wasted or stolen by him, James”, the Crown Prosecutor Sasha Wass said “this puts Ibori’s benefits figure in the region of $500 million’. She therefore urged the British court to make a confiscation order of £90,000,000.00 (ninety million pounds) against James Ibori, based on nothing but somebody’s whimsical and capricious comments.

In his argument against the crown prosecution’s confiscation request and their reliance on Ribadu’s claim that Ibori defrauded Delta State, Krolic said “it is the crown’s case that Delta State was the victim of the fraud done by James Ibori, yet there is no single evidence from Delta State, the victim, either in the Crown’s trial bundle or this hearing that there were withdrawals and funds diversion without just cause despite Nigeria EFCC’s and British Met Police’s detention of Delta state top officials in the course of their investigations. The allegations are not supported by any iota of documentary evidence. This is not the way justice is done”.
Reacting to the British crown’s confiscation request order against him, Ibori said through his Solicitor, Mr. Jonathan Epelle, “once you get passed the sensational media headlines and the ridiculous amount of money that has been mentioned, this confiscation proceedings are all about facts, figures and evidence”. And this is where Ribadu or the British Police have done nothing at all to advance their case; they have all the while relied on scoring sensational headlines in the news media. Ibori continued: “the prosecution have always claimed that I defrauded Delta State of huge sums of money, I am content to say that in this case that we have been witnessing for the last three weeks, the evidence should speak for itself and it should be crystal clear to anyone except the most biased observers that there has been a huge and substantial gap between the prosecution’s sensational claims and the hard evidence required to back up those claims, the sort of evidence that is backed by verifiable facts, instead of nothing but unjustifiable quotes in the news outlets”.
As the defence and the prosecution began their final submissions last Friday, a British member of Ibori’s legal team said: “one wonders how the British Crown Prosecutors would request a confiscation order of £90,000,000,00 to be paid to an English Court against a citizen of an independent nation who in their arguments has presumably committed a fraud against his own independent nation state. Even if the UK is broke and struggling to come out of recession, such request from the British crown prosecution can be best described as the height of colonial imperialism against an independent nation such as Nigeria. Also, it beggars the imagination how another independent state would stand by and watch such rape of its sovereignty. I just hope Nigerians understand what is going on,” he concluded.
Final legal arguments between the prosecution and defence continue in the British court.
Source: Elombah