A company with ties to Oluwaseyi Tinubu, son of Nigeria’s president-elect, Bola Tinubu, reportedly paid $11 Million dollars for a London property seized from an associate of Diezieni Madueke, this is according to a report on Bloomberg.
According to Bloomberg, corporate documents show that Tinubu’s 37-year-old son, Oluwaseyi, is the main shareholder of Aranda Overseas Corp, the offshore company that paid £9 million ($10.8 million) to Deutsche Bank for the property.
Tinubu’s campaign had long been questioned about the source of his family’s wealth. He and his representatives have said that he made his fortune before going into politics by inheriting real estate, investing well, and working as an accountant at Deloitte LLP and an executive at the Nigerian subsidiary of Mobil Oil in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Bloomberg reported that the property’s former owner, Kolawole Aluko, was accused of owing Nigeria more than $1.5 billion in oil-trading debt and fleeing the country. Nigeria’s government was seeking to confiscate Aluko’s assets, including the London mansion, which it suspected had been acquired through profits of crime.
Aluko denied all allegations of wrongdoing. He said a court judgement earlier this year acquitting a former business partner cleared his name. Nigeria’s anti-graft agency is challenging the ruling.
Tinubu, who won the general election in February as the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress, is scheduled to succeed his political ally, Muhammadu Buhari, as president on May 29. He has long been dogged by allegations of corruption and rule-breaking, which he denies. In 1993, Tinubu forfeited $460,000 to resolve a lawsuit in Chicago after US federal authorities said that bank accounts in his name held the proceeds of heroin trafficking.
Buhari was elected on a pledge to tackle widespread corruption. However, according to Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index orCPI, Nigeria’s score has indeed deteriorated over the past eight years.
