By Emmanuel Nduka
Senior Advocate of Nigeria and former Minister for Justice/Attorney-General of the Federation, Mohammed Bello Adoke has advised Abubakar Malami to stop wasting public funds in his bid to find fraud in the OPL 245 Resolution Agreement.
Malami who is Nigeria’s current Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, had hired legal luminaries on behalf of the Nigerian Government to prove that JP Morgan of Chase Bank was “grossly negligent” in its decision to transfer funds paid by oil giants Shell and Eni into an escrow account controlled by a former Nigerian Minister of Petroleum, Dan Etete, which amounted to more than $1.7 billion.
Heritage Times HT had reported that a London Court recently ruled in favour of JP Morgan over Nigeria in the transfer of proceeds from the sale of OPL 245 in the controversial Malabu oil deal, thus putting the case to bed.
Reacting in a statement on Wednesday, Adoke who was AGF under the ex-President Goodluck Jonathan regime, said: “Now that it is clear to all discerning minds that no fraud was perpetrated in the OPL 245 Resolution Agreement.
“The honourable Attorney General of the Federation should be advised to refrain from wasting Nigeria’s hard-earned foreign exchange by way of legal fees on local and foreign counsel in a bid to prove the existence of a fraud that never was.”
Judge Sara Cockerill ruled on Tuesday that the Nigerian Government was unable to substantiate that it had been defrauded by JP Morgan Chase Bank.
Nigerian lawyer, Roger Masefield in February argued that the nation’s case rested on proving that there was fraud and JP Morgan was aware of the risk of fraud.
Late military Head of State Sani Abacha had awarded licence OPL 245 to a company Etete owned in 1998. The damages sought around $875 million paid in three instalments in 2011 and 2013 sent to Etete’s company Malabu Oil and Gas. It also includes interest, taking the total to over $1.7 billion.
Subsequent Nigerian administrations had challenged Etete’s rights to the field over many years until a deal to resolve the impasse through a sale to Shell and Eni was struck in 2011.
