The Chief Spokesperson for the Tinubu-Shettima Presidential Campaign Council, Festus Keyamo, has revealed that 10 accounts were linked to All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, by United States authorities in the early 90s.
Keyamo said $460,000 were deducted from one of the 10 Tinubu bank accounts as a tax on investments domiciled in US banks
Chief Spokesperson for the Tinubu-Shettima made the submission on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Wednesday.
Newsflash Nigeria had reported that the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois released fresh documents against Bola Tinubu over alleged drug dealing and money laundering.
On August 10, the fresh documents showed that Mr Tinubu and two others named K.O. Tinubu and Alhaji Mogati were involved in banking proceeds of illicit drugs and money laundering with Heritage Bank and Citibank.
Tinubu, the former Lagos governor, has come under intense public ridicule and political onslaught for his role in an early 1990s drug trafficking case in Chicago.
Tinubu has not commented on the narcotics affair, which has made headlines since at least the mid-aughts, preferring instead to discuss other parts of his background in corporate accounting, consultancy and pro-democracy activism.
Mr Tinubu’s allies have also made efforts to downplay the matter entirely as a trivial distraction to Nigeria’s democratic experience because it happened decades ago in a distant lang.
But Nigerians have insisted that the presidential candidate should come clean on his involvement in the case, which saw him forfeit up to $460,000 to the U.S. authorities in 1993.
The 56-page document released by the district court’s headquarters in Chicago did not include crucial new details, but it further confirmed snippets of the matter that had been shared spontaneously by the media for years. Journalist David Hundeyin also reignited interest in Mr Tinubu’s drug-dealing background following a July 13 article in West Africa Weekly.
The latest certified copies of the court case, obtained on August 10, showed Mr Tinubu and two others named K.O. Tinubu and Alhaji Mogati were involved in banking proceeds of illicit drugs and money laundering with Heritage Bank and Citibank. It was not immediately clear whether or not ‘Alhaji Mogati’ was a misspelling of Alhaja Abibatu Mogaji, Mr Tinubu’s foster mother, who passed on in 2013.
The U.S. government had in July 1993 sought forfeiture of proceeds of narcotics Mr Tinubu was accused of laundering. The matter was resolved in a compromise between the Tinubus and the U.S. authorities, with the Tinubus being asked to keep the money in the Heritage Bank account while the $460,000 in the Citibank account was forfeited.
Reacting, Keyamo confirmed that 10 accounts were linked to Tinubu by United States authorities in the early 90s, and $460,000 were deducted from one of the accounts as a tax on investments domiciled in US banks.
He was commenting on the controversy surrounding a document recently released by the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois said to have investigated Tinubu’s alleged involvement in narcotics and money laundering about 30 years ago.
The matter, which ended in a settlement, led to Tinubu’s forfeiture of $460,000 in one of the accounts linked to the former governor of Lagos State.
Keyamo said Tinubu took responsibility for all the 10 accounts because they were also traced to his mother and “relatives”.
He also said Tinubu was roped in the drug trafficking case of two Nigerians who once stayed in separate flats in the same building where the ex-governor stayed at a time in the US.
“He, Asiwaju, went to open an account, the address by which he opened the account was already used by these people…investigated for narcotics,” he said.
Keyamo further stated that Tinubu was an employee of Mobil Oil and not a treasurer of a drug cartel.
He explained that Tinubu deposited some funds in bank accounts in the US as investments and got returns on those investments.
The spokesman said the banks were supposed to deduct taxes from the investments but they did not and this was not a “deliberate act” on the part of Tinubu.
“The deposits he made there (in banks) are what bankers called investments; he kept the money there and he was getting interests. They (the US government) said he had not paid tax on those interests. That is all and guess what? The banks are supposed to deduct the tax from the source.
“Out of the 10 accounts, it was only one account – the one in Heritage Bank – that they took $460,000 as tax on interest that he benefited on the investment he made in those accounts.
“In fact, all the money in Heritage Bank was not taken; they took only $460,000 as tax,” said Keyamo, who is also the Minister of State, Labour and Employment.
Keyamo insisted that there was no criminal indictment or conviction against Tinubu, alleging that the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was behind the reincarnation of the controversial court document.
“His (Tinubu’s) detractors kept bringing up these issues over and over when his political profile is rising, when he wants to run for office or any political turn in his life, they will bring up these issues,” Keyamo said.
“The date on the papers flying up and down, the date of certification is 2022, so they are using this to confuse people that these are fresh papers. If documents are 40 years old or 100 years old, once you go to court, and apply for certified true copies of those documents, they will give you those documents but they will stamp the day they are giving you those documents.
“This is what our detractors, the PDP, perhaps that is what they went to the US for when they pretended that they went for high-level engagement. This is part of the high-level engagement they went for.”
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