Following an NCA investigation spanning 11 years and a five-month trial, our client Diezani Alison-Madueke has been acquitted on all counts at Southwark Crown Court. Mrs Alison-Madueke, the first woman to serve as Nigeria’s Minister of Petroleum Resources and the first woman to lead OPEC, faced five counts of bribery and one count of conspiracy to commit bribery — six charges in total — arising from allegations that she had abused her position as a government minister to obtain financial advantages from prominent figures in the Nigerian oil industry. It was alleged that she was provided with the use of luxury properties, refurbishment works to those properties, staff to run them, and settlement of bills connected with their upkeep, together with the purchase of substantial quantities of luxury goods at Harrods and other high-end stores running into millions of pounds. It was further alleged that she was given the free use of private jets by individuals who owned energy companies that had secured contracts with Nigeria’s state-owned petroleum corporation while she was minister.
The case, brought by the National Crime Agency, is understood to be the largest bribery prosecution brought under the Bribery Act 2010.
After an astonishing eight years on police bail, our client was finally charged with these offences. Shearman Bowen took over the case shortly afterwards and prepared it for trial — a process that involved consideration of more than 50,000 pages of prosecution material and a detailed understanding of Nigerian political and civil service culture and systems, essential to properly contextualising and defending the allegations made against her.
The acquittals represent a significant setback for the NCA and raise real questions about the suitability of the extraterritorial reach granted by the Bribery Act 2010, and whether it is right to prosecute offences in the UK where the principal criminality and supporting evidence for it originates from a foreign jurisdiction.
We are delighted that, after 11 years effectively confined to this country and prevented from working, our client can finally rebuild her personal and professional life and seek to return to normality.
The Shearman Bowen team was led by senior partner Mark Bowen, assisted by Irmak Akcebe, Giulio Pagano and Vivien Cochrane. We are grateful to our instructed counsel, Jonathan Laidlaw KC of 2 Hare Court, and Alistair Richardson of 6KBW College Hill who worked tirelessly on the case and with great commitment and skill.
For further coverage of the case, see reports from The Independent and the BBC.
For further information on the work we undertake in defending allegations of corruption, please contact senior partner Mark Bowen.