Senator Stella Oduah highly decorated mansions she acquired secretly while she served as Nigeria Aviation-Minister has been uncovered.
One of the properties is said to be in her name, two through her Nigerian-incorporated firm, and four secretly through her Seychelles offshore company.
International Trading and Logistics Company Limited (ITCL) was incorporated in Seychelles, a commonly used secrecy and tax haven, with Oduah as the ultimate beneficial owner.
Between October 2012 and August 2013, she allegedly utilized the firm to purchase four London properties valued a total of 6.7 million pounds.
Oduah was a minister in ex-President Goodluck Jonathan’s government at the time. She was the Minister of Aviation from 2011 to 2014, when she was sacked as a result of a large corruption scandal.
Two panels that investigated the acquisition of two bullet-proof automobiles for N255 million by the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), an entity under her control, in contravention of Nigeria’s public procurement and appropriation regulations, indicted Oduah.
ITCL purchased a residence at 23 St Edmunds Terrace, London, NW8 7QA for 5.3 million pounds on October 19, 2012, according to UK Land Registry data.
The next year, between August 6 and 15, 2013, three further properties were purchased in the name of ITCL:
Flat 2, 7 Devonshire Terrace, London (W2 3DN)
Bought: on or around 06/08/2013
Price paid: £378,000.
Top Floor Flat, 89 Brondesbury Villas, London (NW6 6AG)
Bought: on or around 12/08/2013
Price paid: £369,000.
Fourth Floor Flat, 19 Warrington Crescent, London (W9 1ED)
Bought: on or around 15/08/2013
Price paid: £680,000.
“Records suggest that none of the four homes were purchased with mortgage finance, implying that Ms Oduah secretly channeled 6.7 million pounds through her offshore firm to make the purchases anonymously.”
“Ms. Oduah’s homes are among the 234 properties in the United Kingdom that our joint research revealed were purchased anonymously by offshore corporations with Nigerians as ultimate beneficial owners.
The research revealed the genuine owners of the properties purchased using the so-called envelope structure, which provides secrecy benefits and, in the case of Nigerian public workers like Ms. Oduah, prevents the Code of Conduct Bureau from learning about undeclared assets.
Before her acquisition of the above four properties, Oduah had bought in her own name, on March 8, 2006, Apartment 209, Cavendish House, 31 Monck Street, London SW1P 2AS for 700 thousand pounds, Land Registry record shows.
On September 14, 2012, about one month before the purchase of the 5.3 million pounds Edmund Terrace property, SPGCL wired $71,973 bank transfer to Daniel Ford & Co., a UK property agency commonly used by Nigerian business and political elites investing in the UK property market anonymously, according to a leaked suspicious activity report submitted by Deutsche Bank to the U.S. financial intelligence agency FinCEN.
Deutsche Bank had helped facilitate the U.S. dollar transfer, acting as a correspondent bank. Reporting that Oduah is the owner of SPGCL in its suspicious activity report, Deutsche Bank reportedly said it suspected the payment to Daniel Ford was money laundering.
In the meantime, while acting as minister, she used ITCL Seychelles to engage in the UK property market through ITCL Nigeria.
She used ITCL Nigeria to purchase Flats 303 and 306 Grant House, 90 Liberty Street, London SW9 0BZ for 475 thousand pounds each on July 12, 2011, just days after taking office as aviation minister.
The senator, who defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC) in August, did not reply to questions about the matter, according to the publication.
Oduah is a member of Nigeria’s National Assembly’s upper chamber, where he represents Anambra North.
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