SaharaReporters has uncovered how disgraced former Minister of
Aviation, Stella Oduah, bought a $1.2million home in London, disguising
it in the robes of a foreign-registered company in an effort to avoid
detection...
The chicanery was undertaken in 2012, when Mrs. Oduah, now the
Senator representing Anambra North constituency, but at that time a
Minister in the government of President Goodluck Jonathan, used ADRIATIC
LAND 4 LIMITED, incorporated in Guernsey in the United Kingdom, for the
purchase.
She gave the address of the company, with registration No. 56274,
as Mont Crevelt House, Bulwer Avenue, St. Sampson, Guernsey, GY2 4LH.
The transaction, which had been kept secret, was blown open when
Mrs. Oduah decided to rent out the house earlier this year and engaged
the services of a shady real estate company, Daniel Ford and Company
Ltd, for that purpose.
It would be recalled that Daniel Foster and Co recently featured
prominently in a US civil case involving a former Minister of Oil
Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke. The company, which is owned by some
UK-based Nigerians, is central to a lot of real estate transactions
involving politically exposed Nigerians.
When Daniel Ford and Company Ltd. rented out Mrs. Oduah’s London
home, she identified herself as the owner of the property, thereby
removing the veil of ownership she had imposed by the nature of its
discreet registration.
SaharaReporters had exposed Mrs. Oduah’s corrupt activities during
her time as Minister of Aviation, the biggest of them being the wild
inflation of the cost of two BMW cars she forced a cash strapped federal
aviation agency, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, to purchase for
her in 2013.
The scandalous purchase led to her being fired by President
Goodluck Jonathan in 2014 after she was found guilty by a committee of
the federal legislature, and indicted.
Another committee set up by President Jonathan had also indicted her but he never made that indictment public.
Mrs. Oduah is under investigation from the Economic and Financial
Crimes Commission, but the commission, for inexplicable reasons, refused
to charge her even after it concluded investigations last year.
During her tenure as a Minister, she reportedly embezzled close to a
billion dollars, mainly from contracts awarded to refurbish airports
across Nigeria. The facelift of those airports turned out to be very
shoddy, and they have all but fallen apart.
According to investigators, Mrs. Oduah used funds she embezzled as
minister to buy ships, as well as some 150 houses in Lagos alone.
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