A report has revealed how a firm belonging to the President-elect, Bola Tinubu’s son bought an $11 million London, United Kingdom mansion in 2017, which President Muhammadu Buhari’s government sought to confiscate as part of a probe into one of the biggest corruption scandals in Nigeria’s history.
In the report by Bloomberg, it was stated that though there is no suggestion that Tinubu was personally involved in the acquisition of the UK property in 2017, President Buhari had visited him (Tinubu) at the London mansion in August 2021, nearly four years after the purchase took place.
Corporate documents obtained by the media organisation showed for the first time that Tinubu’s 37-year-old son, Oluwaseyi is the main shareholder of Aranda Overseas Corp., an offshore company that paid £9 million ($10.8 million) to Deutsche Bank for the property in North London in late 2017.
It was revealed that the private three-floor residence in St. John’s Wood, a district favoured by American bankers, is equipped with an eight-car driveway, two gardens, electric gates and a gym.
However, the report noted that at the time Tinubu’s son bought the London property, the Nigerian government was seeking to arrest the house’s former owner, accusing him of going on the run while owing the country an oil-trading debt worth more than $1.5 billion.
The upscale real estate was one of the assets Buhari’s government had sought to confiscate because the properties had been suspected to have been acquired by the businessman, Kolawole Aluko, with the profits of crime.
But Aluko denied all allegations of wrongdoing and said that a court judgment earlier this year acquitting a former business partner has cleared his name, but the ruling is being challenged by Nigeria’s anti-graft agency.
Bloomberg reports that while staying at the 7,000-square foot London home in August 2021, Tinubu received a visit from Buhari in the property.
The report recalled that Premium Times, using documents obtained from the Pandora Papers leak of offshore companies data revealed that the shareholders and directors of Aranda from its formation 24 years ago until at least 2010 were the former Governor of Osun State, Adegboyega Oyetola, and the head of a Nigerian property group, Elusanmi Eludoyin.
However, Oyetola’s spokesman and Eludoyin did not respond to requests for comment.
But documents filed this year in response to new anti-money laundering rules in the UK and seen by Bloomberg show that Tinubu’s son, an entrepreneur active in advertising who played a prominent role in his father’s presidential campaign, has been in control of British Virgin Islands-registered Aranda since June 2011. The company was registered as an overseas entity in the UK on January 20, 2011.
It was recalled that early in Buhari’s first term, the Nigerian government initiated legal cases against Minister of Petroleum, Diezani Alison-Madueke, and two businessmen, Aluko and Olajide Omokore, who won lucrative contracts during Diezani’s tenure.
The US government said in a 2017 forfeiture lawsuit filed in Texas that Aluko and Omokore bribed the former Minister by funding her “lavish” lifestyle and failed to pay the state energy company for most of the crude they received.
But Alison-Madueke denied the allegations and has been challenging multiple forfeiture orders issued by Nigerian.
