1. Obasanjo breaks silence on Nigeria’s sick president — denies that he picked someone known to be an invalid
LAGOS, Jan. 22 (Xinhua) — Former Nigerian leader Olusegun Obasanjo has said ailing President Umaru Yar’Adua showed a medical report that certified him fit to contest the 2007 Presidential election. Responding to questions at a media forum in Abuja, Obasanji said Yar’Adua had all the qualities of a good leader, at the time he was chosen as his party’s candidate for the election….“So, for people to say that I, Olusegun Obasanjo deliberately brought somebody who is an invalid to rule this country is the height of insult,” he stressed. “That I have put so much into this country in peace and in war and given this country to somebody who will run it down,” he asked. “No body picked Yar’Adua so that he will not perform, If I did that, God will punish me because I love this country so much and there is no reason why I should do that,” Obasanjo told his audience.
2.14 days to decide Yar’Adua’s fate
A Judge in the country, Justice Dan Abutu, has ordered the cabinet to pass a resolution on Yar’Adua’s fitness within two weeks after a former lawmaker brought a legal case against the government, saying his failure to transfer power was in breach of the constitution.
…The Former President, Olusegun Obasanjo, said “If you take up a job, elected, appointed or whatever, and then your health starts to fail you and you will not be able to deliver, to satisfy the people you are supposed to serve, then there is a path of honour and path of morality. If you don’t know that, you don’t know anything. I will stop on that note,” he told a briefing in Abuja on Thursday. The ex-President is still an influential figure within the ruling party and his closeness to the Vice President means his influence over government could grow should he (the VP) take over.
3. $350 M seized from Abacha’s son by Swiss authorities. unnamed Monaco intermediary penalized for abetting money laundering
Authorities in Switzerland have ordered the seizure of assets worth around $350m from Abba Abacha, son of Sani Abacha, ex-President of Nigeria. The order came as a result of a suspended custodial sentence emanating from a conviction of being a member of a criminal organisation. Abba, one of the sons of the late military dictator, has also been convicted for graft.
The investigation which started in 1999 was as a result of a request by the Nigerian government to the swiss authorities to recover an estimated $3 billion misappropriated by Sani Abacha during his four-year rule as Nigeria’s Head of State. The government of Nigeria has since recovered $700m form the Swiss. In a statement, the Geneva Canton’s justice office said “The first order of the sentence issued yesterday by the examining magistrate found that Abba Abacha, born November 9, 1968, son of the late General Sani Abacha, was guilty of participation in a criminal organisation,”
The Swiss authorities also confirmed that they had convicted an intermediary who is currently living in Monaco, for having been part of the criminal organisation run by the Abacha family. In a statement the authorities said “The person has also been ordered to pay the Canton of Geneva 10million Swiss Francs — which corresponds to illegal gains obtained from these culpable activities,” It seems the Abacha family used members of their family, close aides and business associates to transfer the money into different Swiss bank accounts.
4. World Bank president and uber-zionist NWO creep Zoellick to visit Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire, and Ethiopia for the African Union Summit, starting Tuesday.
5. it appears that some of the money in question, in the Swiss bank accounts, needed to be laundered because it came from Halliburton and KBR, to bribe Nigerian officials in the course of building a liquefied natural gas plant in Nigeria — NEXT Magazine, March 2009
At least three of our former presidents, Sani Abacha, Abdusalami Abubakar, and Olusegun Obasanjo, received millions of dollars in bribes from American and European contractors retained to build Africa’s first liquefied natural gas plant in Bonny, Rivers State, according to US law enforcement officials. Also enmeshed in the vast and formalized bribery scheme is a long line of ministers, bureaucrats, top politicians,state and local officials and former oil minister Dan Etete, according to American investigators.
This cast of characters, charged with running the affairs of 150 million people in the heart of Africa,received stacks of US dollar bills in briefcases and sometimes in bullion vans. In other cases they received their payoffs via electronic bank transfers involving such financial institutions as Citibank. In all, these eminent Nigerians accepted at least N27 billion in bribes from the oil services companies in exchange for billions of dollars in contracts to build our liquefied natural gas plant, US investigators say.
very comprehensive article at NEXT
6. timeline of Halliburton and Nigeria bribery scandal
1988: Dresser Industries acquires M.W. Kellogg, ten years before Dresser merges with Halliburton.
September 1994: M.W. Kellogg and three other companies form a partnership known as TSKJ, incorporated in Medeira, Portugal. Each partner owns a 25 percent equal share. Kellogg’s three other partners are Technip of France, Italy’s Snamprogetti, and Japan Gasoline Corp. The partnership submits a bid to Nigeria LNG to build a natural gas plant in Nigeria. Nigeria LNG is owned by the Nigerian government and Royal Dutch/Shell Group. TSKJ’s $2 billion bid is not immediately accepted even though it was 5 percent lower than a bid submitted by competitor, Bechtel Group, Inc.
November 1994: As TSKJ awaits Nigeria’s decision on the bid, Wojciech Chodan, an executive at Kellogg and later a consultant for Kellogg Brown & Root, meets with London lawyer Jefferey Tesler, who is known for his contacts and friendly relations with the Nigerian government, including its dictator Gen. Sani Abacha. During the meeting, they discussed channeling $40 million to Gen. Abacha through Mr. Tesler’s firm Tri-Star, based in Gibralter, Spain.
March 1995: TSKJ formally hires Mr. Tesler as agent; TSKJ’s bid has still not been accepted by Nigeria LNG. Mr. Tesler’s employment contract is signed by an M.W. Kellogg executive on behalf of the TSKJ partnership. Mr. Tesler had been working on behalf of TSKJ prior to March 1995 and the employment contract was given to Mr. Tesler as a reward for his prodding of Nigerian officials. The employment contract provided that Mr. Tesler would be paid $60 million if Nigeria awarded the construction contract to TSKJ. Mr. Tesler’s Tri-Star was contracted to receive at least $160 million in five agreements signed between 1995 and 2002, and the funds were directed to bank accounts in Switzerland and Monaco.
7. December 2003: will the French indict Cheney? guess not….
One of France’s best-known investigating magistrates, Judge Renaud van Ruymbeke–who came to fame by unearthing major French campaign finance scandals in the 1990s that led to a raft of indictments–has been conducting a probe of the Nigeria deal since October. And, three days before Christmas, the Paris daily Le Figaro front-paged the news that Judge van Ruymbeke had notified the Justice Ministry that Cheney might be among those eventually indicted as a result of his investigation. …The suspected bribe money was mostly ladled out between 1995 and 2000, when Cheney was Halliburton’s CEO. The Journal du Dimanche reported on December 21 that “it is probable that some of the ‘retrocommissions’ found their way back to the United States” and asked, did this money go “to Halliburton’s officials? To officials of the Republican Party?” These questions have so far gone unasked by America’s media, which have completely ignored the explosive Le Figaro headline revealing the targeting of Cheney. It will be interesting to see if the US press looks seriously into this ticking time-bomb of a scandal before the November elections.
8. June 2009: interview with Moshood Fayemiwo, Part 1 and Part 2
9. interview with Obasanjo — date unknown but probably March 2009
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