Pandora Papers: How Governor Bagudu amassed dirty billions and how he is hiding it

Eleven years ago, Abubakar Bagudu, the current governor of Kebbi State, but then a senator, dispatched a delegation to Singapore in search of a new haven to shelter his controversial wealth, which is a target of ongoing forfeiture proceedings by the United States Department of Justice.

Investigators say the huge funds, warehoused offshore, is part of billions of dollars Mr Bagudu helped the Sani Abacha family to steal from Nigeria in the 1990s.

Referred by Farrer and Co., a prestigious centuries-old London law firm that has represented the British royal family, Mr Bagudu’s choice of secrecy provider in Singapore was Asiaciti Trust, an entity notorious for helping clients hide behind opaque offshore trusts to launder dirty money across borders.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore, MAS, imposed a fine of one million and a hundred thousand dollars on Asiaciti in July 2020 for “serious breaches” of Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) regulations between 2007 and 2018.

When on February 23, 2010, Mr Bagudu’s delegation – comprising his brother, Ibrahim Bagudu, and London lawyer, Ben Davies, from Byrne and Partners, now a part of PCB Byrne – met with Asiaciti’s officials, they registered his preference for a new structure of secrecy to oil the flow of his dirty wealth for the benefits of himself and his family.

In 1997, some 13 years earlier, Mr Bagudu had structured offshore holdings Ridley Trust and Ridley Group in notorious tax and secrecy havens, Guernsey and the British Virgin Islands, positioning himself as the unseen but ultimate beneficiary. But in 2010, he wanted to terminate the Ridley structure and transfer his assets into another structure, hence the need for Asiaciti’s service in Singapore.

The reason, according to a 2010 Asiaciti memo, was control. As noted in the memo, Ibrahim told the February 2010 meeting that his brother, Mr Bagudu – “the client” – had become “disillusioned” with institutional and independent trustees (of the Ridley Trust) as they (he and his brother) had no control over their action or inaction and suggested they feared they could lose the hidden assets.

He then insisted that any new trustee arrangements to be erected in Singapore “must ensure that the family cannot lose ‘control’ of the assets.”

In the months that followed, 99 million euros in cash and securities was then transferred from Ridley to a new structure enabled by Asiaciti, which brushed aside red flags about Mr Bagudu’s controversial background and source of his wealth. Asiaciti acted with advice from Farrer and Co. and Byrne and Partners, now a part of PCB  Byrne, documents showed.

Mr Bagudu is long known to have played an instrumental role in the Abacha conspiracy to steal and launder billions of dollars belonging to Nigeria. But how he set up complicated structures of secrecy to hide stolen money as well as the role of his enablers, including prestigious British law firms and Serious Organised Crimes Agency (SOCA) the predecessor of the National Crimes Agency (NCA), has never been crystal clear.

Pandora Papers investigation – led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, including more than 600 journalists, including some from PREMIUM TIMES, and about 150 news organisations around the world – uncovered financial secrets, including those of politicians, former and serving public officials, including known and suspected kleptocrats such as Mr Bagudu. Involving 11.9 million leaked records, which journalists sifted through for two years, the Pandora Papers project is the biggest collaborative transnational investigation in the history of journalism.

The leaked records came from 14 offshore services firms from around the world who help clients set up shell companies and design opaque structures to conceal their financial dealings.

The Bagudu Blue structure

As documents showed, Asiaciti helped Mr Bagudu to set up a multi-layered structure with footprints in at least three countries, namely Singapore, Cook Islands, and the United Kingdom. At the head of the structure is Blue Holdings Trust, registered in Cooks Island as a “purpose trust” to “wholly” own a Singapore-incorporated private trust company, Blue PTC Pte Ltd., with Mr Bagudu’s brother, Ibrahim, and an Asiaciti nominee as directors.

The Blue PTC Pte Ltd is in turn the trustee of two family trusts – Blue Family Trust (1) and Blue Family Trust (2). Under each trust, then, is a Singapore family-owned investment holding company, FHIC, Blue Holdings (1) Pte Limited, and Blue Holdings (2) Pte Limited, respectively.

Each of the FHIC has an investment account with Waverton Investment Management, formerly JO Hambro Investment Management, and James Hambro and Partners, both London-based firms. Assets kept with the two firms are now frozen, according to U.S. court documents. America has been at the forefront of helping Nigeria recover the Abacha loot, saying that hundreds of millions of dollars stolen were laundered through banks under its jurisdiction.

The beneficiaries of each of the family trusts and the corresponding investments domiciled in London were Mr Bagudu, his wife, seven children, and his brother, Ibrahim.

In September 2010, according to minutes of some meetings we reviewed, a sum of 99 million euros was moved from Ridley through the Blue PTC in Singapore to the investment accounts in London and distributed as follows:

Blue Holdings (1) (17,007,016 euros): Waverton – seven million euros; James Hambro – 10,007,016 euros.

Blue Holdings (2) (81,841,163 euros): Waverton – 23 million euros; James Hambro – 58,841,163 euros.

This article originally appeared in the Premium Times

Photo: Pintrest