A legal bid by a former governor of Edo State, Lucky Igbinedion, to recover N3.3 billion he lost to Venezuelan fraudsters in a weird oil deal, has been quashed by a United States District Court.
The 2006 transaction, facilitated by former Venezuelan Ambassador, Enrique Arrundell, was enmeshed in a pile of intrigues so deep that the court ruled that the deal might not even have happened in the first place.
According to the court, beyond evidence of money transfers to New York and Swiss bank accounts, very little about the deal can be “established with any certainty.”
Part of the messy details surrounding the deal was the less-than-wholesome involvement of Nigerian oil and gas heavyweight, MRS Oil and Gas Limited, at a time when it had not even commenced business.
MRS is owned by Sayyu Dantata, cousin of Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, who is also believed to own up to 20 percent of the company.
In 2006, through his now defunct company, Skanga Energy and Marine Limited, Mr. Igbinedion, while still a sitting governor, tried to make a killing from the lucrative but fraud-tainted oil importation business. Mr. Igbinedion instructed his old secondary school friend and front, Chris Imoukhuede, to approach Mr. Arrundell to help pave way for the company to procure diesel and PMS from Venezuela.'
Mr. Imoukhuede was the chief executive officer of Skanga at the time.
Mr. Arrundell on his part introduced Mr. Imoukhuede to a suspected Venezuelan conman, Francisco Gonzalez, who claimed that his fraudulent company, Arevenca, was a registered agent for Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petroleos De Venezuela S.A (PDVSA).
After several months of scheming that involved exchange of emails in broken English, dodgy shipping documents, and trips to Caracas, Mr. Igbinedion thought he was getting a deal made in heaven.
In fact, during one of such trips to Caracas in January 2007, the mustachios politician was ostensibly handed the key to the city of Caracas and announced as the “AlcaldÃa de Libertador”, the honorary Mayor of the central Caracas borough of Libertador in an elaborate event garnished with lavish dinner and expensive wine and attended by powerful Venezuelans.
The breakdown of the deal looked as glamorous: Averenca would initially send 35,000 metric tons of AGO to Skanga and later up it to three cargoes monthly. All that was required was for Skanga to pay for the freight and make partial payment for the consignment. It was only required to make full payment after three months of taking delivery of the full shipment.
Mr. Igbinedion authorised the transfer of about $22 million to Averenca’s Swiss and New York accounts. The consignments were supposed to be delivered in two ships – Digniti and Ventur. The shipments never arrived. The Nigerian Port Authority said it does not have any record of “Digniti” or “Ventur” entering Nigerian waters at the time it was billed to arrive.
PREMIUM TIMES investigation also revealed that there are no vessels named “Dignitii” or “Ventur”. Searches on Lloyds directories and other ship directories showed that the ships never existed anywhere in the world.
After it dawned on him that he had been duped, Mr. Igbinedion instituted a $600 million lawsuit against PDVSA arguing that Arevenca was its agent and thus PDVSA was liable for the actions of its agent.
Strangely, for a company that was duped such a huge amount of money, Skanga approached the suit in a near comical manner. Its lawyers put forward mediocre arguments. At one point, it even provided evidence that indicated that it might have forged its audit report.
Two reputable American law firms it initially contacted to handle the case left after being owed retainer. One of them, Robert Dunne LLC, quit because of the inability of Mr. Igbinedion’s Skanga to pay fees as low as $3,800.00 (N627, 000).
David Burger, a lawyer with the law firm of Robinson Brog, which was Skanga’s original law firm in the suit, said in a an affidavit before ditching the case that his firm had to withdraw following “the continued inability of my firm to have any adequate direct communication with Skanga, with delayed and inadequate communications only relayed through a two lawyer firm Located in Mississippi”.
Strangely, despite Skanga’s tenacious legal action against PDVSA, for some reasons only Mr. Igbinedion and Mr. Imoukuede can answer, it did not serve Arevenca or Mr. Gonzalez notice of the lawsuit, despite listing them as defendants.
Mr. Imoukuede, according to PREMIUMTIMES TIMES told them to contact the company’s lawyer for comment.
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