Tinubu not indicted in trending U.S. drug case – Spokespersons
Spokespersons of Tinubu/Shettima Presidential Campaign Council, has said the presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu was not indicted in a trending U.S. case, describing as false allegations that he was found wanting in the suit.
Festus Keyamo a spokesperson of the APC presidential campaign council, during an interview with Channels TV’s “Politics Today” programme on Wednesday night, in reaction to a statement by critics from Labour Party, LP claiming that Tinubu was indicted in the US case, discredited such claims.
Acccording to Keyamo, they went off the rail by saying the APC presidential candidate was indicted.
“There cannot be an indictment if Asiwaju is not a defender or was not a defendant to that case. I repeat it for the umpteenth time, I don’t want to sound like a broken record here. Asiwaju was not a party to that case.
“It was just an account that was sued not him. It was account in his name that was sued, so how could you indict him if there was no account?” he added.
When asked how many accounts were involved, Keyamo simply said 10 accounts in three banks.
“Not in one person’s name. There were ones linked to his mother. He took responsibility for all of them because they were all Tinubu family. His mother was there, his company was there, his brother was there.
“At the end of the day, they now pleaded with him that please don’t come against us if it was found that we wrongly seized your accounts in the first place,” he explained.
Keyamo who challenged the public to look that paragraph 6: page 2 of the settlement signed by the lawyers, stressed that the lawyers were appealing to Tinubu not to come against them on the case.
“It was him (Tinubu) giving them indemnity. It was not the other way round by them telling him go and sin no more. He (Tinubu) was the one telling them go and sin no more. The documents are there before Nigerians to read,” he said.
Twitter had gone agog with a United States District Court judgement from the Northern District of Illinois taking possession of Ahmed Bola Tinubu’s money over his involvement in drug trafficking.
The judgement docketed on July 26, 1993, and certified by Thomas O. Burton, the clerk of the court, indicted Tinubu for heroin trafficking in the state of Illinois through a proxy organisation owned by Adegboyega Mueez Akande and subsequently forfeited the proceeds of the crime to the U.S. government.
The funds, which were held by First Heritage Bank and Citibank in trust for Tinubu, the presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC), were forfeited to the U.S. government for being proceeds of drug-related offences.
Details from the now-circulated court papers show that Michael J. Shepard, the attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, said in 1993 that the court has jurisdiction over the case brought to it by special agent Kevin Moss.
According to the document, the monies held in those forfeited accounts were proceeds from white heroin drug operations operated by Akande and his partners.
Akande had a strong and well-connected narcotics business, whose proceeds were substantial and kept in the forfeited bank accounts, the document shows.
The affidavit revealed that the defendant’s—Tinubu funds—represented a substantial part of the proceeds from this operation or property involved in money laundering, and that Judge Michael believed based on indisputable evidence that the funds belonging to Tinubu stashed in his Citibank and First Heritage Bank accounts were proceeds from Akande and other narcotraffickers’ heroin operations.
The judge concluded that the proceeds be forfeited to the US government.
Reacting to the circulation of the documents, the spokesman of the APC presidential campaign, Bayo Onanuga, on Wednesday described the documents in circulation as a “campaign of calumny” adding that “The Muckrakers are back in business.”
Onanuga on his Facebook page wrote, “The Muckrakers back in business.
“The Tinubu traducers on Tuesday returned to their usual campaign of calumny, this time waking up the carcass of a drug allegation in America that was buried in 1993.
“Long after the campaign failed in 2003, it resurfaced weeks to the primary election of the All Progressives Congress. The opponents thought it was lethal enough to make the APC disqualify Tinubu from the race.
“It failed spectacularly and Tinubu went on to win the primary with a landslide. The muckrakers are back again with the same story, dressed as ‘certified true copy’ from the U.S. Court.
“The campaign’s media and publicity director, Bayo Onanuga had perused the new document and dismissed it as the same old tale. It is as dead as a dodo,” Onanuga told a news medium on Tuesday and made reference to a section of the campaign’s FAQ’s manual.
“One of the unconscionable and wicked lies peddled by political opponents about Bola Ahmed Tinubu was to paint him erroneously as a drug baron.
“The accusation arose out of an investigation by FBI agent Kevin Moss of Tinubu and Compass Investment and Finance accounts at First Heritage Bank and Citi- Bank in the U.S.
“On January 10, 1992, Mr Kevin Moss requested and obtained a court order to freeze the accounts.
“On January 13, 1992, Mr Moss telephoned Tinubu in Nigeria to justify the amounts in the accounts, running into $1.4 million. Part of the money was said to have been deposited by two Nigerians, being investigated for drug offences.
“After the telephone conversation, Tinubu instructed his lawyer in the US to file a lawsuit against the order freezing his accounts.
“This dragged on till 15 September 1993, when an agreement was reached for an out of court settlement. Judge John A Nordberg, of the U.S. district court for the Northern District of Illinois, read out the agreement reached by the two parties. Part of the funds, $460,000 was seized by the government.
“The FBI never charged Tinubu with any drug offence; the case did not go on trial. Tinubu was never convicted. And he was never barred from entering the United States.
“In 2003, ten years after, when the PDP opponents wanted to use the shuttered allegation to disqualify Tinubu from running for a second term in Lagos, the Inspector General of Police, Tafa Balogun made an enquiry with the American Consulate on Tinubu’s status.
“The Consulate gave Tinubu a clean bill in a reply by the Legal Attache, Michael H. Bonner.
“The letter read: ‘Our sincerest greetings to you and all of the law enforcement personnel in the Nigeria Police Force, whose continued assistance is very much appreciated. In relation to your letter, dated February 3, 2003, reference number SR. 3000/IGPSEC/ABJ/VOL. 24/287, regarding Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a records check of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) National Crime Information Centre (NCIC) was conducted.
“The results of the checks were negative for any criminal arrest records, wants or warrants for Bola Ahmed Tinubu (DOB 29 March 1952). For information of your department, NCIC is a very centralised information centre that maintains the records of every criminal arrest and conviction within the United States and its territories.
“Almost thirty years after the allegation was discharged and the case declared dead, Tinubu’s opponents keep waking up its corpse, in futile efforts to malign him.”
