Posted on 10/10/2006 3:43:00 PM PDT by Libloather
Nigeria VP Charged With Corruption
(AP) NEW YORK
Nigeria's Vice President Atiku Abubakar was charged Tuesday at a special anti-graft court with more than a dozen counts of corruption stemming from the alleged diversion of $125 million of public funds to private interests.
Charges filed by prosecutors before the Code of Conduct Tribunal in the Nigerian capital against Abubakar also include allegations he received more than $4.6 million in bribes.
Abubakar, who is feuding with President Olusegun Obasanjo, has in the past dismissed the allegations as part of a plot to stop him from running for Nigeria's top office in April's presidential elections. His office could not immediately be reached for comment.
The Code of Conduct Tribunal is the only court in Nigeria with powers over public officers granted immunity against prosecution under the constitution. It can order the removal of guilty officials from office and order forfeiture of assets acquired through corruption.
Abubakar did not appear before the court. He was represented by lawyers who challenged the jurisdiction of the special court to hear the case. Another hearing is set for Nov. 16.
According to the court documents, some $6 million out of the $125 million Abubakar was alleged to have diverted from a special petroleum fund directly under his control went to iGate, a Louisville, Kentucky-based communications firm that tried to do business in Nigeria in 2004.
U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, a Louisiana Democrat, has been under investigation in the U.S. since March 2005 for allegedly using his position to help iGate - which sought contracts with Nigeria and other African nations - and taking bribes in return. The FBI said it found $90,000 stashed in a freezer in his home.
Oil-rich Nigeria is regularly ranked among the most corrupt countries in the world by Berlin-based corruption watchdog, Transparency International.
Vice President Atiku Abubakar is expected to appear today before the Code of Conduct Tribunal to defend charges of abuse of office, embezzlement of public funds and money laundering brought against him by the Federal Government.
His invitation by the tribunal is sequel to the report by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which accused him of conspiring with others to loot the Petroleum Technology Deve-lopment Funds (PTDF).
But the Vice President immediately approached an Abuja Federal High Court, praying it to stop the Federal Government from acting on the reports and findings of the commission. Hearing in the matter also comes up today.
The EFCC report had alleged that the VP conspired with others to loot the Petroleum Technology Development Funds (PTDF).
The investigation report was presented to the Senate by President Olusegun Obasanjo, who disclosed that the PTDF scandal was blown open by the United States Congressman, William Jefferson. The President said Jefferson had written him over a $6.5 million telecommunication deal between NDTV, a company owned by Otunba Oyewole Fasawe and iGate, a US telecoms firm.
Obasanjo, who stated that the investigations on his deputy were conducted from May 8, 2004 to September 5, 2006, had claimed that the controversial N100 million, donated to the Obasanjo-Atiku Campaign Organisation by Governor Joshua Dariye of Plateau State, was deposited into the VP's account in 2001.
He gave graphic details of the report, which alleged that Atiku, a former Executive Secretary of the PTDF, Hamisu Abubakar, and a friend of the VP, Fasawe, mismanaged the PTDF.
But the Vice President who rendered counter accusation against his boss, headed for the court, alleging that he was not given fair hearing before the report that indicted him was prepared.
Five Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs), Alhaji Abdullahi Ibrahim, Chief Wole Olanipekun, Dr. Rickey Tarfa, Professor Taiwo Osipitan and Mr. Emeka Ngige, who have since been briefed by the Vice President, will argue the matter before an Abuja Federal High Court today.
The Vice-President, in the suit, wants the court to, in the interim, restrain the FG from acting on the EFCC report pending the hearing and determination of the substantive suit.
The embattled Vice President is asking the court to declare that the defendants breached his right to fair hearing in that he was not given the opportunity to defend himself on the allegation leveled against him in the EFCC report.
The report, he argues, is null, void and of no effect whatsoever.
He also seeks a declaration that the September 6 decision of Federal Executive Council (FEC) on the said report are unconstitutional, unfair, unjust, illegal, null and void and of no effect whatsoever.
Atiku also prays the court for an order setting aside the decisions of the FEC concerning him which was based on the EFCC report.
The plaintiff is praying the court for a declaration that the administrative Panel of inquiry is not a panel known to law and/or does not qualify as a panel within the contemplation of the Tribunal of Inquiry Act Cap 447, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 1990 or the 1999 Constitution, and therefore unconstitutional, illegal and of no effect whatsoever.
He therefore prays the court for an order setting aside the said report as well as an order of perpetual injunction restraining the defendants, their servants, agents and privies howsoever stated from acting or further acting on the reports.
Vice-President Atiku who faulted the administrative panel report which condemned him for authorizing placement of funds in two banks at below market rates, claimed that no question was put to him on the issue and asserting that the funds were placed at rate fixed by President in the banking industry at the material time.
He further averred that the panel did not ask him any question on the failure to seek approval of the FEC before authorizing the placement of funds in the banks.
The embattled Vice-President who accused the President of bias in the constitution of the Panel and in presiding over the FEC meeting also alleged that his boss instigated the National Assembly to impeach him.
The defendants in the suit are the office of the Attorney General of the Federation, The Minister of Justice himself, Chief Bayo Ojo, SAN, Minister of Education, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Chief Bamidele Dada, the National Security Adviser, Major General Abdullahi Mukhtar, who were in their respective capacity, chairman and members of the Administrative Panel of Inquiry on the EFCC report.
Also cited as defendants are; the EFCC, the President of the Senate and the Speaker of House of Representative.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200610100015.html
how long before we see him trying to get his money out of Nigeria via our bank accounts?
Can't be true. Demmycrats are born without original sin.
NOTHING will happen to William Jefferson Democrat LA.
NOTHING EVER happens to democrats for ANY reason....
The outcome will depend on how much the judges are bribrd
You are right. A Senator sends an email to a 16 yo and he is gone.
Jefferson is found with $90,000 in his freezer and a tape of him making the deal and he hasnt even been charged yet.
His being black is of course in his favor especially right before the election. However it is strange that he is allowed to skate on this Charge. Well: It isnt unprecedented, Murtha skated on similar charges.
I'm thinking that what all of us should do on here, is post everything about every dirty democrat, and there are plenty: kerry, Klinton, kennedys, nancy, boxer, leaky leahy, biden, rangel and the list goes on.
BTW did you read on here where the Commish in NYC is going to open the 37 year old murder of a NYPD officer that Rangel was present at?????
If I can find the link, I will send to you, but I did find this:
www.newyorkpost.com
(Original publication: October 8, 2006)
Nearly 35 years after the fact, it still reads like a fiction movie. Four New York City police officers rush into a mosque in Harlem, responding to a call of an officer in need of assistance. The doors are locked behind them, they are surrounded, beaten, stomped and one is fatally shot with a policeman's service revolver, possibly his own. A phalanx of responding officers storms the building, herding 16 suspects into a basement room.
Outside the building, a crowd grows, first hurling insults, then bottles, bricks and burning rags. Within minutes, commanding officers order all police personnel out of the building, leaving all the suspects and evidence behind. After that, all white police officers are ordered to leave the area, leaving a handful of African-American cops to face an out-of-control mob.
Before Patrolman Phil Cardillo died from his injuries six days later, the department issued statements implying he was at fault for entering the mosque and that he could have shot himself or been shot by one of his fellow officers. After Cardillo's death, Mayor John Lindsay and Police Commissioner Patrick Murphy refused to attend his funeral.
For many current and former members of the NYPD, April 14, 1972, stands as one of the darkest days in the history of the department.
"As horrible as that day was, what made it worse was that we were sold out by some of our own," said Randy Jurgensen, a retired detective who has written a book about the Cardillo homicide and the badly botched, politically charged investigation into the incident that he eventually took over nearly a year after the actual crime.
Jurgensen understands fictional movies. He has acted in dozens of them, including his role as one of the Tommy-gun-toting assassins who gunned down Sonny Corleone in "The Godfather." His exploits as a detective were fictionalized in the Al Pacino movie, "Cruising," on which he also worked as an actor and technical adviser.
Now, at the age of "60-something," the Westchester County resident is adding nonfiction author to his lengthy resume with the publication of "Circle of Six," co-written with another retired NYPD detective, Robert Cea. The book presents a raw, unvarnished, insider's perspective of the events surrounding the incident and its aftermath, albeit a decidedly one-sided version.
The title refers to the six people the authors blame for the fact that Cardillo's death remains an unsolved homicide to this day, including the former mayor and police commissioner, along with U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel, Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan, former Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Ward and Chief of the Department Michael Codd.
According to the book, those six were instrumental in ordering all of the police out of the mosque, which resulted in evidence being tampered with or destroyed and no suspects being identified or interviewed. During the riot that ensued, Jurgensen was hit in the head with a brick, a moment captured in a dramatic photograph by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Eddie Adams that ran on the front page of The Daily News and The Reporter Dispatch, a precurser to this newspaper.
"I saw that picture and I thought, 'Oh my God! He's dead!' " said his wife, Lynn, who was leaving a movie theater in White Plains that night with a girlfriend when she saw the photograph at a newsstand. "And back then, there were no cell phones or anything. It took hours before I found out he was all right."
When Jurgensen woke up after nearly 24 hours in a coma, his hospital room was being guarded by a young patrolman by the name of Raymond Kelly, the current commissioner of the department whose endorsement appears on the book's jacket.
Jurgensen maintains that while the 16 suspects lined up in the basement and one of the assaulted officers was about to start identifying the men that attacked him, Rangel walked in and relayed a command from Ward ordering the officers out of the building.
According to the book, Rangel had worked out a deal between Farrakhan, Ward and others to bring all the potential suspects to a police precinct later in the day for questioning in exchange for having all the police leave the mosque immediately.
The police left, but the mosque members were never brought in for questioning.
Years later, during an investigation into the incident, Rangel reportedly said he remembered being present during the incident but did not remember whether he had entered the mosque. Last week, Rangel declined an interview request to discuss the book, which is slated for a mid-October release.
Jurgensen said that in 1972, there was no protocol established or training given to police officers regarding the entrance into houses of worship, which has long since changed.
Even though more than 1,000 people were in the streets to protest the police presence in the mosque, Lindsay was so image conscious that he demanded that the disturbance wasn't big enough to be referred to as a riot and, by not attending Cardillo's funeral, he became a reviled figure among the police rank and file and their families.
"Let's just say that was not his finest hour," said Vincent Cannato, author of the biography "The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York."
The first detective assigned to investigate Cardillo's homicide was given orders that he could not enter the mosque or interview any superior officers within the department and, after about 11 months on the case with almost no progress, that investigator resigned and Jurgensen was assigned to Cardillo's homicide.
The book details the years of frustration that followed for Jurgensen and his partner, Vito Navarra, one of the four officers assaulted at the mosque. In the interim, the NYPD conducted its own internal investigation of the Cardillo homicide, during which investigators did not even bother to interview Navarra.
Ultimately, Jurgensen said, he began to operate outside of departmental guidelines and procedures and broke several laws, but eventually arrested a suspect named Lewis 17X Dupree.
After Dupree's first trial, which lasted more than five months, the jury was deadlocked with a 10-2 vote for conviction. After his second trial, which lasted five weeks, he was acquitted.
Akbar Muhammad, a member of The Nation of Islam who currently serves an an international assistant to Farrakhan and was in Mosque No. 7 on April 14, 1972, said he could not comment on Jurgensen's book without having read it.
The source of or motive for the original 10-13, or officer-in-need-of-assistance call, has never been established.
During the course of the investigation, Jurgensen readily admits that he "went off the reservation," willfully violating NYPD rules and a few state laws in his efforts to conduct an investigation that he contends the department went out of its way to impede.
Internal Affairs hit him with seven departmental charges for insubordination and failure to follow departmental procedures right after the second trial. Faced with the possible loss of his pension after 19 years of service, Jurgensen pleaded no contest to the charges and retired two weeks shy of his 20th year on the job.
"Despite what seemed like a lifetime of blood, sweat and tears, at that time I decided that my family came first and I was done," he said.
Jurgensen said he considered writing about the case for nearly three decades, but finally was motivated to do so after meeting Cardillo's widow at a police function in 2002.
"I did it, not so much for any sense of closure, but for a sense of justice," Jurgensen said.
Another level of justice could be forthcoming since, after reading an advance copy of the book, Commissioner Kelly has ordered a re-examination of the Cardillo homicide.
"The police commissioner has asked the Major Case Squad to take a fresh look at the case," said NYPD Assistant Chief Michael Collins.
Believe it or not, I got an email from this guy the other day. He needs my help to transfer some money out of Nigeria. I'm gonna make a mint doing nothing!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1716463/posts
This is the link to the story....
We responded one time for the farrakhan mosque down the street. It seems one of the worshippers had a heart attack.
When we got ther we were informed that no white man might enter. We only had one black Firefighter there so we sent him in , and a few minutes later they dragged the guy out onto the steps where we got him going enough to make it to the hospital.
Geez - I'm SHOCKED! SHOCKED I tell you that this story isnb't ALL over the news /s
We all know if Jefferson was a Pubbie the story would be AND he would be out of office right now.
Related story on Jefferson:
Testimony links firm to William Jefferson D-La probe
NOLA ^ | 10/08/06 | Bruce Alpert and Bill Walsh
Posted on 10/08/2006 5:03:43 AM PDT by Libloather
Testimony links firm to Jefferson probe
In papers filed with the FBI, Suleiman YahYah, a Nigerian businessman listed as a target in the ongoing probe of Rep. William Jefferson, D-New Orleans, said that one of the 2004 meetings he attended with Jefferson and iGate Inc. CEO Vernon Jackson, occurred in the Washington offices of Worldspace Inc., an international satellite radio provider. YahYah's statement is the first to provide any kind of link between iGate and Worldspace, whose CEO, Noah Samara, said in a June filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that he turned over documents and gave testimony to the Virginia grand jury investigating Jefferson. Samara loaned Jefferson $50,001 to $100,000, according to Jefferson's 2006 campaign disclosure report. Jefferson, who has not been charged, denies any wrongdoing. Jackson was recently sentenced to seven years and three months in prison after pleading guilty to providing $400,000 to a firm controlled by Jefferson's family in return for the congressman's help winning telecommunications contracts in Nigeria and Ghana. In secretly recorded conversations between Jefferson and Lori Mody, a cooperating federal witness, Jefferson said YahYah has "a lot of folks to pay off" to get the iGate contracts approved. YahYah has denied paying or accepting bribes...
(Excerpt) Read more at nola.com ...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1715765/posts
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