Malami, EFCC shun enquiry on Tinubu’s UK property acquisition

Minister of justice, Abubakar Malami has failed to comment on a property allegedly belonging to Seyi Tinubu, son of president-elect Bola Tinubu. And so also the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which is being supervised by Malami.

This is according to US-based Bloomberg in its investigative report on the “fraud-tainted” acquisition believed to worth $10.8 million. The newspaper claimed that Seyi purchased the property in 2017 through Aranda Overseas Corp. — an offshore company he is named as a main shareholder.

Bloomberg claimed the EFCC, in 2016, seized the property from Kola Aluko, an ally of Diezani Alison-Madueke, former minister of petroleum. An excerpt from the report stated that “early in Buhari’s first term, his administration initiated legal cases against Diezani Alison-Madueke, who served as oil minister for five years until 2015, and two businessmen — Aluko and Olajide Omokore — who won lucrative contracts during her tenure.”

It continued: “The US government said in a 2017 forfeiture lawsuit filed in Texas that the pair bribed the minister by funding her “lavish” lifestyle and failed to pay the state energy company for most of the crude they received.

“In June 2016, a federal judge in the capital, Abuja, granted a request by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to seize more than a dozen properties that Aluko had acquired in Nigeria and abroad, including the one in St. John’s Wood. That forfeiture order was still in force when Tinubu’s son bought the house out of receivership 16 months later.”