UK Police charge ex-minister Diezani Alison-Madueke with bribery

The British Police announced on Tuesday that it is charging Diezani Alison-Madueke, the former Minister of Petroleum Resources, with bribery offences, that it alleged while linked with when she was a minister in Nigeria.

Reuters reported that the British Police said it suspected Alison-Madueke, 63, accepted bribes in return for awarding multi-million-pounds oil and gas contracts and she would be charged at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on October 2, 2023.

“We suspect Diezani Alison-Madueke abused her power in Nigeria and accepted financial rewards for awarding multi-million-pound contracts.

“These charges are a milestone in what has been a thorough and complex international investigation,” said Andy Kelly, Head of the National Crime Agency’s International Corruption Unit (NCA).

Alison-Madueke was the Petroleum Resources Minister in the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan from 2010 to 2015. She was also the President of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

The NCA said Alison-Madueke was accused of benefitting from at least 100,000 Pounds in cash, chauffeur-driven cars, flights on private jets, luxury holidays for her family, and the use of multiple London properties.

Charges against her also detail financial rewards including furniture, renovation work and staff for the properties, payment of private school fees, and gifts from high-end designer shops such as Cartier jewellery and Louis Vuitton goods, the NCA said.

Alison-Madueke has been on the radar of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) since she left office in 2015 for corruption investigations. She left the country shortly after leaving office in 2015.

She later said the reason she left the country on May 22, 2015, was because she was diagnosed with ‘the most aggressive form of breast cancer – Triple Negative Cancer – and was hurriedly flown to England in order to undertake a critical course of treatment’.

However, several sums of money and other assets, including jewellery and houses, linked to her had been seized and forfeited to the Federal Government.

In October 2022, Justice Mobolaji Olajuwon of the Federal High Court in Abuja ordered the final forfeiture of two Abuja properties, and two luxury cars belonging to Alison-Madueke, to the Federal Government while ruling on the application by the EFCC asking for the final forfeiture of the assets.