An $11 million London mansion that the President Muhammadu Buhari government was seeking to seize as part of a probe into one of the biggest corruption scandals in the country’s history has been acquired by a firm belonging to Oluwaseyi, son of Nigeria’s president-elect, Bola Tinubu.
According to a Bloomberg report which was widely published on Tuesday, a number of previously unreported UK company documents showed the secret purchase.
The Bloomberg report explained that there’s no suggestion that Tinubu was personally involved in the acquisition of the UK property in 2017, even though the current president visited him there in August 2021, nearly four years after the purchase took place.
Tinubu, who is set to assume office as Nigeria’s next leader on May 29, has long been questioned about the source of his family’s wealth, including throughout the recent election campaign, when he and his representatives were pressed about it by local and international media, the report added.
He and his campaign have said he made his fortune before going into politics by inheriting real estate, investing well and working as an accountant at Deloitte LLP and an executive at the Nigerian subsidiary of Mobil Oil in the 1980s and early 1990s. In an interview with the BBC in the run-up to the election, Tinubu cited Warren Buffett as an example he followed to become rich.
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The corporate documents seen by Bloomberg showed for the first time that Tinubu’s 37-year-old son, Oluwaseyi, is the main shareholder of Aranda Overseas Corp., an offshore company that paid £9 million ($10.8 million) to Deutsche Bank for the property in north London in late 2017.
The private three-floor residence in St. John’s Wood — a district favoured by American bankers — is equipped with an eight-car driveway, two gardens, electric gates, and a gym, Bloomberg stated.
The international news medium stated that Tinubu’s spokesman and Oluwaseyi did not respond to emails, phone calls, and text messages seeking comment. A British lawyer listed as Aranda’s agent in the UK also declined to comment citing confidentiality rules.
At the time of the purchase, Nigeria’s government was seeking to arrest the house’s former owner, accusing him of going on the run while owing the country an oil-trading debt worth more than $1.5 billion.
The state was also attempting to confiscate the upscale real estate and other assets it suspected had been acquired by the businessman — Kolawole Aluko — with the profits of crime. Aluko denied all allegations of wrongdoing and said a court judgment earlier this year acquitting a former business partner has cleared his name.
That ruling is being challenged by Nigeria’s anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC)
Tinubu, 71, was announced as the winner of the election conducted in February as the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and is scheduled to succeed his political ally Buhari on May 29. He was a key powerbroker in the merger of opposition parties that brought the current head of state to office in 2015.
A former governor of Lagos state, Tinubu has long been dogged by allegations of graft and rule-breaking, which he denies. In 1993, he forfeited $460,000 to resolve a lawsuit in Chicago after US federal authorities said that bank accounts in his name held the proceeds of heroin trafficking. Tinubu’s lawyers have said he was never charged over the matter.