Abacha Loot: Despite outcry, FG secretly pays Malami’s lawyers ‘dubious’ $15m fees

Oladipo Okpeseyi and Temitope Adebayo, two Nigerian lawyers hired for the return of $321 million Abacha loot from Switzerland, have been secretly paid their controversial fees, TheCable can report.
Although they were initially to be paid $17 million, it was cut by $2 million and paid following pressure from a very popular Lagos-based pastor who is a political associate of President Muhammadu Buhari.

Adebayo, one of the beneficiaries, confirmed the payment in a telephone interview with TheCable.
Hassan Dodo, director of information at the ministry of finance, and Ahmed Idris, accountant-general of the federation, did not pick calls and were yet to respond to messages from TheCable seeking further information on this development.

Presidency sources told TheCable that the pastor mounted enormous pressure on the president, claiming that the lawyers had spent “a lot of money” in trying to get the Swiss authorities to return the money to Nigeria.  TheCable had sent a freedom of information (FOI) request to Abubakar Malami, the attorney-general of the federation (AGF), requesting for the various agreements that were signed with the Abacha family, the Swiss lawyer and the Nigerian solicitors by his office.

Instead of responding, Malami filed a libel suit against the newspaper.

TheCable had raised the alarm on the duplication of legal fees in the recovery of the $321 million from Switzerland.

 The federal government had engaged the services of Enrico Monfrini, a Swiss lawyer, in 1999 to help trace, identify, freeze and recover all looted funds traced to Sani Abacha, Nigeria’s military ruler from 1993 to 1998. 

After seven years of work, including investigations and litigation across various countries, Monfrini had traced and recovered $321 million from Luxemborg banks.



The funds were domiciled with the government of Switzerland in 2014 pending a final request for transfer from Nigeria.
Monfrini and other lawyers involved had also been paid their fees, with the Swiss getting about $12 million.
However, Malami, rather than write directly to the Swiss authorities to seek the transfer of the funds to Nigeria, engaged Okpeseyi and Adebayo for the purpose.
They have now been paid $15 million as “professional fees” for writing the letter — more than the Swiss lawyer who traced and recovered the funds over a period of seven years.



Okpeseyi and Adebayo were both members of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), the party founded by Buhari to contest in the 2011 presidential election. Malami was the legal adviser to the party. 


In their defence, Okpeseyi and Adebayo said they deserve their fees having “perused loads of documents to ascertain status of the matters assigned to us”.
They also said they travelled to London to hold meetings with lawyers familiar with the status of the assets and to engage lawyers licensed to practice in the jurisdictions covered by their instructions.
According to them, they engaged the law firm of BCCC attorneys-at-law to take steps towards ensuring the repatriation of the Luxembourg fund through a power of attorney.
Their attorneys travelled to the Canton of Geneva and met with the Swiss authorities, according Okpeseyi and Adebayo.


Finally, the Nigerian lawyers wrote a letter to the attorney-general of Switzerland — effectively the only thing required of the AGF from the beginning — and the money was returned to Nigeria.


They then asked to be paid 5 percent of the repatriated loot as contained in the agreement signed with the AGF. The lawyer who did the actual recoveries across various jurisdictions got 4 percent.


In a series of interviews with TheCable, Monfrini had maintained that the engagement of new lawyers was needless as he already completed the recovery job and all that was left was for Malami was to “write a letter to the Geneva attorney-general or the government of Switzerland requesting the money to be paid back to Nigeria.”
He added that such activity is not to be developed by lawyers but only through government-to-government communication.


Defending the payment, Adebayo had argued that Monfrini didn’t complete the recovery job because the money was still in Switzerland.
Kemi Adeosun, former minister of finance, initially refused to approve the payment to the lawyers – she, however, later came under pressure to deny stopping it.
Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, TheCable understands, had queried the request for payment when he was acting president, asking Malami to come and justify it.

Meanwhile, not much was heard about the $321 million again until October 2017, more than a year after the letter of intent was signed.