Carol Moseley Braun
Moseley Braun was the subject of a 1993 Federal Elections Commission investigation over $249,000 in unaccounted-for campaign funds. The agency found some small violations, but took no action against Moseley Braun, citing a lack of resources. Moseley Braun only admitted to bookkeeping errors. The Justice Department turned down two requests for investigations from the IRS.
In 1996, Moseley Braun made a private trip to Nigeria, where she met with dictator Sani Abacha. Despite U.S. sanctions against that country, due to Abacha's actions, the Senator did not notify, nor register her trip with, the State Department. She subsequently defended Abacha's human rights records in Congress.
Her former fiancé Kgosie Matthews, who also served on her campaign staff (in violation of U.S. immigration regulations), had been a lobbyist for the Nigerian government; Matthews would later leave the country.
In 1998, after George Will wrote a column reviewing the allegations of corruption against her, Moseley Braun responded to Will's comments, saying that "I think because he couldn't say nigger, he said corrupt." She also compared Will to a Ku Klux Klansman, saying "I mean this very sincerely from the bottom of my heart: He can take his hood and put it back on again, as far as I'm concerned." Later, Moseley Braun apologized for her remarks.
Braun announced her intention to run for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in February 2003. On January 15, 2004, four days before the Iowa caucuses, Moseley Braun dropped out of the race and endorsed Howard Dean.
Nigerian General Sani Abacha
During Sani Abacha's regime, a total of £3 billion was reported siphoned out of the country's coffers by the head of state and members of his family. At that time Abacha was listed as the world's fourth most corrupt leader in recent history. Abacha was married to Maryam Abacha and had seven sons and three daughters.
General Abacha died in June 1998 while at the presidential villa in Abuja in the company of Jeremiah Useni who was Chief of Staff from 1997 to 1998 and one Musa Abdullahi who sources close to the military junta claimed was the unofficial strategist and mastermind of Abacha's plan to transform himself into a democratically elected dictator. He was 54.
He was buried on the same day, according to Muslim religion, without an autopsy, fuelling speculations that he may have been poisoned by political rivals (via prostitutes). There was an allegation that the prostitutes were imported from either India or Egypt
After his death, Maj. Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, Nigeria's defence chief of staff, was sworn in as the country's head of state. Abubakar had never before held public office and was quick to announce a transition to democratic civilian rule which led to the election of President Olusegun Obasanjo.
The government of Obasanjo has implicated the deceased general and his family in a wholesale looting of Nigeria's coffers. According to post-Abacha governmental sources, some $3 or $4 billion USD in foreign assets have been traced to Abacha, his family and their representatives, $2.1 billion of which the Nigerian government tentatively came to an agreement with the Abacha family to return, with the quid pro quo being that the Abachas would be allowed to keep the rest of the money.
Although this proposal caused a massive outcry at the time for seeming to reward the theft of public funds, it was subsequently rejected by the late dictator's son, Mohammed Abacha, who continues to maintain that all the assets in question were legitimately acquired. In 2002, Abacha's family agreed to return $1.2 billion that was taken from the central bank.