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Nigerian anti-corruption officials arrest former governor James Ibori

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Friday, December 14, 2007

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Nigerian police arrested former Delta State governor James Ibori Wednesday on charges of abuse of office, corruption, and money laundering.

According to a statement by Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ibori was picked up at a private residence in the Asokoro District of Nigeria's capital city, Abuja. Ibori was to be arraigned yesterday at the Federal High Court in Kaduna. He is facing a total of 103 charges.

James Ibori had been governor of Delta for the past eight years, until leaving office in May, 2007. Although he earned a modest US$25,000 per year as governor, he had reportedly accumulated more than $35 million in foreign accounts. Ibori's UK assets have been frozen while the Metropolitan police investigate further. Should the money be deemed the proceeds of crime, it could be transferred back to the Nigerian government.

Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua was elected in May on a platform of battling corruption in the government. Since taking office, Yar'Adua has overseen the arrest of five other former governors on corruption offences. James Ibori had supported the president in his election bid.

Law enforcement officials and anti-corruption advocates in the UK and Nigeria have complained that the Nigerian attorney-general was interfering and slowing down investigations. The attorney-general, Michael Aondoakaa, has denied the allegations.

In a December, 2007 paper by the global corruption watchdog Transparency International, entitled Report on the Transparency International Global Corruption Barometer 2007, Nigeria was determined to have one of the highest rates of corruption, evaluated as a percentage of citizens reporting they paid a bribe to obtain a service.


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This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.
Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
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