LAGOS, Nigeria – Nigeria's anti-corruption agency is reviving a five-year-old scandal involving one of Africa's richest oil blocs, in which a former petroleum minister and his allies allegedly made $1.1 billion and the state oil company $210 million.
The agency filed suit this week charging former petroleum minister Dan Etete, former justice minister Mohammed Adoke and businessman Aliyu Abubakar with fraud and money laundering of hundreds of millions of dollars in the sale of Malibu OPL 245 bloc.
The lawsuit says the money was transferred from a Nigerian escrow account at the London branch of JPMorgan Chase.
The money was proceeds of a deal brokered by Adoke in 2011 to resolve an ownership dispute involving British-Dutch oil multinational Shell, Italian Agip, Etete's Malabu Oil, Abubakar's Rocky Top Resources and Nigeria's state oil company.