Nigeria is set to enter criminal proceedings against two Britons, Jeffrey Tesler and Wojciech Chodan, who have confessed to bribing officials in Abuja and elsewhere in the country to get contracts.
The contracts include the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) of liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities on Bonny Island, valued at about $6 billion (about N900 billion).
Federal Attorney General and Justice Minister, Michael Aondoakaa, who made the disclosure in a telephone interview on Sunday night, said the government will from this week initiate criminal proceedings against Tesler and Chodan at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Aondoakaa confirmed that the corruption scandals allegedly involving Siemens and Halliburton, and related scams, will all be re-opened to give the country a clean bill of health in the anti-corruption crusade.
Said he: "Since they have admitted to conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in the United States and the United Kingdom, by in effect acting in connivance with some unscrupulous Nigerians to defraud the Federal Government, we are going to initiate criminal proceedings against them.
"At least, for once, we want to tell the whole world that Nigeria is not as bad as people are made to believe, but that it is foreigners who encourage Nigerians to engage in corrupt practices."
Aondoakaa noted that the offence committed by the Britons is a very serious one which the government will not treat with levity, adding that their Nigerian accomplices will also be prosecuted.
The U.S. Justice Department had on Friday posted on its website www.usdoj.gov and on that of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) www.fbi.gov the report that Tesler and Chodan have been charged in an indictment unsealed in the U.S. for allegedly participating in a decade-long scheme to bribe Nigerian officials to obtain EPC contracts.
The statement said they were each charged with one count of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and 10 counts of violating the FCPA.
The indictment seeks forfeiture of more than $130 million (about N19.5 billion) from them.
At the request of the American Government, Tesler was arrested by the London police at the weekend. There is an outstanding arrest warrant in the U.S. for Chodan.
According to the indictment, Tesler was hired in 1995 as an agent of a four-company joint venture awarded four EPC contracts by Nigeria LNG Limited, (NLNG) between 1995 and 2004 to build LNG facilities on Bonny Island.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is the largest shareholder of NLNG, owning 49 per cent.
Chodan is a former salesperson and consultant of a UK subsidiary of Kellogg, Brown & Root Inc. (KBR), one of the four joint venture companies.
At "cultural meetings," Chodan and other co-conspirators allegedly discussed the use of Tesler and other agents to pay bribes to Nigerian officials to secure their support for awarding the contracts to the joint venture.
According to the U.S Justice Department, the joint venture hired Tesler to bribe high-level Nigerian officials, including top-level ones in the executive, and another agent to bribe lower-level officials, including employees of NLNG.
At crucial junctures before the award of the EPC contracts, KBR’s former Chief Executive Officer, Albert "Jack" Stanley, and others allegedly met with three successive former senior members of the executive branch of the government to ask them to designate representatives with whom the joint venture would negotiate the bribes.
Stanley and others allegedly negotiated bribe amounts with the representatives and agreed to hire Tesler and the other agent to make the payment.
The joint venture entered into consulting contracts with a Gibraltar corporation allegedly controlled by Tesler, to which the joint venture paid approximately $132 million for Tesler to use to bribe Nigerian officials.
On behalf of the joint venture and the four joint venture companies, Tesler allegedly wire-transferred bribe payments to or for the benefit of various Nigerian officials, including those of the executive branch, NNPC, NLNG, and for the benefit of a political party.
If convicted on all charges, each defendant faces a maximum prison sentence of 55 years
Leave Your Comments