RichyBlacK:

I agree with you. But in this case, the poster is the source!

Pataki:

Pity, you still do not get it! How can the poster be the source? I am totally appalled that the biased state of your mind towards the Nigerian government in Abuja (which is reasonable though), would not allow you to objectively rule out baseless speculations.

I should then safely assume that, if I come with my own baseless and rumor mongering story tomorrow, in favor of the ''objective'' mind of the moderator, it becomes tenable and logical for discussion.

I admit it, I'm biased. I do not like our government officials because 95% of them are thieves and common criminals. I do not trust the Nigerian government because they've failed Nigerians. Furthermore, my bias makes me think of nothing good about the federal government, especially the buffoons in Abuja. I'm sorry but I can't help it. That is the way I feel. There is abundant evidence for any sane person to feel the way I feel.

I feel that the Nigerian government is a failed government. I see nothing they've done for the common man. If you have any example to counter my view, I gladly welcome them. The Nigerian government do not care about Nigerians, my firm belief. Hence, I do not care about the government. I have no confidence whatsoever in our present government.

Thankfully, we have pockets of sanity in Nigeria: some of the government agencies, some of the state governments, some of the local governments, and some aspects of the judiciary.

The central government in Abuja is totally useless, and I say this with strong conviction.

The facts again:

1. No light.
2. Police shoot and kill civilians at checkpoints.
3. Customs officials steal mails sent to Nigeria.
4. Marauding murderers kill innocent civilians in the name of religion.
5. Miscreants kidnap children for money.I admit it, I'm biased. I do not like our government officials because 95% of them are thieves and common criminals. I do not trust the Nigerian government because they've failed Nigerians. Furthermore, my bias makes me think of nothing good about the federal government, especially the buffoons in Abuja. I'm sorry but I can't help it. That is the way I feel. There is abundant evidence for any sane person to feel the way I feel.

I feel that the Nigerian government is a failed government. I see nothing they've done for the common man. If you have any example to counter my view, I gladly welcome them. The Nigerian government do not care about Nigerians, my firm belief. Hence, I do not care about the government. I have no confidence whatsoever in our present government.

Thankfully, we have pockets of sanity in Nigeria: some of the government agencies, some of the state governments, some of the local governments, and some aspects of the judiciary.

The central government in Abuja is totally useless, and I say this with strong conviction.

The facts again:

1. No light.
2. Police shoot and kill civilians at checkpoints.
3. Customs officials steal mails sent to Nigeria.
4. Marauding murderers kill innocent civilians in the name of religion.
5. Miscreants kidnap children for money.
6. Fools kill their children because they are "witches". Government does nothing to stop it.
7. Assassinations occur every day and zero effort is put in the conducting investigations.
8. Students are pushed into prostitution because of unimaginable poverty - poverty as a direct result of a failed government.
6. Fools kill their children because they are "witches". Government does nothing to stop it.
7. Assassinations occur every day and zero effort is put in the conducting investigations.
8. Students are pushed into prostitution because of unimaginable poverty - poverty as a direct result of a failed government.

AGF to sue Harliburton, Siemens
•Seeks to recover $5 billion for Nigeria sun
Monday, March 9, 2009

The Federal Government is gearing up for a major legal battle against foreign multinationals that come to Nigeria to offer bribes to top officials in order to secure contracts and other business. In the suit expected to be filed against the companies in their home countries, Nigerian government would be demanding for damages and reparations totaling or exceeding five billion dollars from the multinationals.


Michael Aondoaaka (SAN)
•Photo:

Top ranking sources from the office of the Attorney General of the Federation, Michael Aondoaaka (SAN), told Daily Sun last night that a team of lawyers, including three Senior Advocates of Nigeria, have been checking facts and liaising with their counterparts in the countries of origin of these companies to determine how best to initiate the legal battle and take the battle to the firms in their homestead.

‘Nigeria is incurring heavy losses on account of bad press emanating from all these Halliburton scandal and the like. The perception has become so bad that genuine businessmen from our country find it difficult to present proposals to partners abroad on account of these scandals. Yet to offer or accept bribes is as much a crime in Nigeria as it is in the home countries of these firms. They cannot come here, rubbish us and get away with it and make it look as if Nigerian statutes actually condone such practice’, said the source.

The intention, Daily Sun gathered, is to also turn the table and generate bad press for these firms and portray them in the international community as bad corporate citizens who go about corrupting public officers by offering them bribes.

The office of the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice is said to be irked that these companies seem to go scot free with offences they cannot dare to commit in their countries, offences for which some of them have even paid heavy fines in their countries. The three Senior Advocates who have been penciled down for the job to lead the team of lawyers include a certain M.D Belgore and another simply identified as Dodo. They are also to, in collaboration with identified foreign legal experts, file suits against these firms in major financial capitals of the world.

It will be recalled that in recent times firms like Siemens, Halliburton, Chevron and a few others have been implicated in one financial sleaze or the other for which Nigeria has received a dose of bad press from the international media.

With the new proactive move said to be emerging from the office of the AGF, foreign lawyers are said to have opted to help Nigeria on the matter and get these firms to pay fines and reparations for committing offences punishable both in Nigeria and in their home countries and yet giving the impression that Nigeria is the guilty party and soiling the country for offences, which they ought to be punished.

“Even Halliburton was fined about six hundred dollars by its home country for offences allegedly committed against Nigeria, why should they not also pay the country that suffered the consequence of their offence?” asked our source.

The move as well aims to nip in the bud contemplations by other foreign firms aiming to do business in Nigeria to factor paying of bribes as a norm in business practices in the country. It would drum it into corporate firms that they may have to pay heavily for indulging in such nefarious practic

FG to sue foreign firms involved in bribery
By Ade Ogidan, Yakubu Lawal and Richard Abu guardian

A NEW offensive directed at multinational corporations and their home countries linked with various bribery scandals has been initiated by the Federal Government to curb corruption in Nigeria.

The exercise, which is being handled by the office of the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, is basically pro-active in its entirety as it is designed to stem the tide of losses Nigeria suffers from such contract scams.

So far, some American and European multinationals have been named in connection with bribery in Nigeria and the Federal Government is gathering its facts for evidence to sue them for damage done to Nigeria through the dirty deals.

The companies are Wilbross and Halliburton (American), and Siemens of Germany.

The firms are at the centre of various alleged bribery scams in Nigeria's telecommunications, oil and gas sectors.

A source in the Attorney-General's office told The Guardian at the weekend that Nigeria has lost untold sums in cash and in reputation through such fraudulent transactions. Indeed, Nigeria is hoping to reap not less than $10 billion if the action is successful, being the calculable sum the nation has lost as a result of the scams.

The source said the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Chief Michael Aondoakaa (SAN) had put forward the argument that the country has suffered losses on three fronts: perception/humiliation, discrimination in the world of business, and colossal economic and financial losses.

Consequently, the official said the AGF's office is set to file actions against the companies involved in such bribery scandals on their own soil or in the world's financial centres, where they are very active.

Aondoakaa, it was learnt, would leave Nigeria for London tonight to set the stage for the early filing of charges against the companies.

Aondoakaa, it is said, has also set up an exploratory team of three lawyers, including Damian Dodo, Mohammed Dele Belgore and one M.S. Ambey, all Senior Advocates, to begin the process of liaising with top law firms across the world's major centres with a view to getting the companies to pay for the damage done to Nigeria.

The action against the companies may begin in the next three months, The Guardian learnt.

The cocktail of scandals that hit contract business in Nigeria began with Halliburton, a U.S. company, which allegedly paid $180 million to some Federal Government officials, to win bid for the construction of the first two trains of the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) plant in the late 1990s.

The scandal came to the public domain after a French court launched an investigation in October 2003, over allegations in respect of unwholesome conducts of some officials of the company.

Halliburton allegedly admitted in a regulatory filing with Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of USA, that improper payments to Nigerian government officials might have been made in order to win the LNG contract.

The company was also earlier alleged to have admitted that an internal probe suggested that members of the TSKJ consortium, which it leads, might have bribed government officials.

But the Nigerian officials allegedly named in the scam were not prosecuted despite the assurance given in 2004 by the Federal Government that the matter had been handed over to the then newly-inaugurated Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

When the French investigation began in 2003, Halliburton said it was innocent of the allegation, since the alleged bribe occurred before its' acquisition of Kellog Brown & Root (KBR).

Halliburton was also said to have instructed its representatives in the country to submit the names of the Nigerians allegedly involved in the scam to government.

Following this revelation, the House of Representatives Committee on Public Petitions that investigated the matter in August 2004 recommended that all companies linked with TSKJ and Halliburton in Nigeria should be excluded from new contracts until its investigation was completed.

Indications, however, emerged recently that Halliburton had agreed to pay $559 million to settle federal charges for its employees' bribing of officials in Nigeria.

The settlement, still awaiting formal approval from the U.S. Department of Justice, would be the biggest fine by a U.S. company in a bribery case, topping the $44 million that Baker Hughes Inc. paid last year in relation to charges that it paid bribes in Kazakhstan.

Penalties for bribery and corruption offences have been increasing worldwide with Siemens, the German conglomerate, agreeing to pay $800 million (GBP564 million) to settle U.S. allegations regarding payments to government officials in several countries to win infrastructure contracts.

The Anglo-Dutch giant, Shell was also implicated in the bribery scandal. Indeed, there were revelations that some officials of Shell Development Corporation, SPDC may have benefited from the allegation of $6 Million bribe allegedly distributed by Willbross Group to secure contract for the Eastern Gas Gathering System, EGGS, in Nigeria.

Documents obtained revealed that some officials of Shell had promised to help Willbross Group secure and retain the plum contract.

The EGGS phase 1 contract price was approximately $216.5 million. The EGGS coating optional scope price was approximately $30 million while EGGS phase 2 price was estimated at $141` million.

The former General Manager of Wilbross International, Mr. Jason Edward Steph, is at present facing prosecution under the Foreign Corrupt Act for being the mastermind that distributed $6 million to some senior officials of Federal Government, the ruling Peoples' Democratic Party (PDP) stalwarts, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS) and SPDC.

The German telecommunications giant Siemens was alleged to have paid more than $100 million in bribes to officials in Nigeria, Russia and Libya.

A German court in Munich had named some past Nigerian ministers of communications as well as a Senator as having received bribes of about 10 million Euros from the German engineering conglomerate.

The court, in an October 4 ruling, listed Maj.-Gen. Tajudeen Olanrewaju, Dr. Bello Haliru Mohamed, Chief Cornelius Adebayo and the late Alhaji Haruna Elew’, as well as Senator Jibril Aminu, among the alleged bribe recipients.

The court indicted Siemens for offering 77 bribes to cabinet ministers in Nigeria, Libya and Russia, to win lucrative contracts.

bilms:

are u guys going to crusify me.

i only said what i saw.

cheers

TOYOSI20:

@ Op

It is imperative that siting the source of these allegations will help make the "allegations" more credible otherwise, I'm afraid its no use,

anyone can pull out any random stuff from no where and claim they are hard facts!!

Worried by the whopping N56 billion owed the nation’s distressed banks through insider abuse by their former directors, the Senate said it was collaborating with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) in a bid to recover the debt.

Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Finance and Other Financial Institutions, Senator Nkechi Nwaogu, disclosed yesterday that the Upper House and the regulatory agencies had established the loss of the huge sum of money to loans obtained by the banks’ directors and their cronies.

Nwaogu said at a press conference that necessary machinery would be set in motion to expose the affected directors and recover the money.

She spoke on the heels of Tuesday interactive session with the regulatory authorities and owners of three distressed banks – Fortune, Peak and Triumph – on how to pay the N12.1 billion owed depositors of the banks.

She stated: “I believe you may want to know that the next area that we are going to concentrate is the recovery of those debts owned by insider creditors.

“We know that the records have it that pre and post-Consolidation, we have a figure of over N56 billion attributable to borrowings or loans taken by directors and people who are related to them that were not paid.

“Some of the directors have over twenty accounts in some of the banks. Some of them owe N10 billion, N12 billon, N18 billion and yet no recovery has been made since 2005.

“I think Nigerians deserve to know who these directors are and why they still owe and are left free.”

She said that the Upper House would also take steps to review and amend the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) and the CBN establishment Acts in order to plug the loopholes in the legal documents.

According to her: “Another thing that has come out as a result of our persistent pursuit for the total payment of the depositors’ money is that there is need now to review and amend the NDIC Law.

“There is also need now to review and amend the CBN Act of 2007. We have now seen some loopholes, some areas for which we will need to strengthen both regulatory bodies to ensure that they effectively discharge their duties.

“In fact, there are three Acts that we are going to amend. The CBN Act, the Banks and Other Financial Institutions (BOFIA) Act (2004) and the NDIC Act.

“These are the three Acts that we are still working on. With regards to that of CBN, we are looking at and we are embarking on some studies to look at what is happening in other countries and see how their own Central Banks work. “We want to see whether it will be good to have Nigeria ’s CBN manage their core functions as bankers of last resort and its other core functions and take the issue of supervision and monitoring onto another agency.”

She said these were the options being considered by the Upper House.

“These are some of the options we are going to review to see whether we can borrow and whether it will help us to make our CBN effective and make them more responsive to the financial dealings in our nation,” she added