Pfizer, the massive US drug company at the center of a Wikileaks "dirty tricks" revelation has more troubles coming its way.  The US Department of Justice is probing Pfizer on allegations of foreign corruption practices which may land some Pfizer officials in jail.

Saharareporters sources said the corruption includes Pfizer's actions in Nigeria where the multinational company was exposed in a diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks.   The cable talked about the dirty tricks employed by Pfizer Nigerian CEO to pressure former Nigeria Attorney General, Michael Aondoakaa, to drop lawsuits filed against Pfizer relating to its criminal drug trials in Kano Nigeria.

Pfizer's country manager Enrico Liggeri had employed private investigators to dig up dirt on Aondoakaa, which it then secretly leaked to the local media in Nigeria as pressure on Aondoakaa to drop the charges.

The Pfizer case in Nigeria and all the dirty politics around it was first broken by Saharareporters in May 2008, when we exposed Aondoakaa's plan to receive over $10 million in bribes.

Aondoakaa had initially approached the federal government lawyers in the case, asking them to let him add $10 million to their legal fees for himself. But one of the lawyers reportedly turned down his request.

Aondoakaa then devised another means of collecting the bribe, but to make the payments look legitimate, he recruited US-based lawyer, Dr. Paul Botwev Orhii, a relative of his, and appointed him as the "expert witness" on behalf of the federal and Kano state government.    Dr. Orhii was to become the perfect conduit for the Pfizer bribe Aondoakaa sought desperately.

At the time he was hired, Orhii was had only just left Law School in the US and was practicing as an immigration attorney doing small time legal jobs in the Bissonet area of Houston.  Although he had worked at University of Texas Health Science Centre, San Antonio in the US, he had neither acted as an expert witness in any drug trial nor had his law practice which started after he was called to the Texas bar in 2007 taken him to any court relating to a drug case. On a website http://paulorhii.com/page1.html he created with his bio, there was no mention of working as “mediator bio-medical expert witness”

The late Nigerian president Umaru Yar’adua appointed Orhii to NAFDAC after the Supreme Court endorsed his sham election to office in 2008. Both Aondoakaa and Nigeria’s current Chief Justice, Aloysius Katsina –Alu in addition to his attack against SaharaReporters succeeded in getting him the lucrative job of Director General of Nigeria's National Food Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) after the Pfizer gig fell apart. 

Orhii was appointed to NAFDAC in January 2009 by the Yar'Adua regime with a strong push by Aondoakaa, who was bent on transforming it into a conduit for massive and regular bribes to be delivered to him.  Reliable sources told Saharareporters that Dr. Orhii was delivering up to N500 million monthly to Aondoakaa.  As Orhii settled into the position, those figures grew substantively.

In interviews after he assumed the new position at NAFDAC, Orhii claimed that Pfizer had sought his help in the past to help with the legal case in Nigeria.   Saharareporters could not independently confirm if Mr. Orhii was instrumental to helping Pfizer pressurize Aondoakaa to drop the legal challenges against Pfizer but a close source said Orhii was "definitely involved with the Pfizer scam".

In December 2008, Orhii sued SaharaReporters for libel, apparently on Aondoakaa's behalf. A source had told us that Orhii bragged before late Umaru Yar'adua that he could help shut down SaharaReporters for good as we had become a thorn on the side of the regime. Orhii case was however dismissed by a US District judge in Texas for lack of jurisdiction shortly after Orhii was appointed to NAFDAC.

Other US embassy cables published by Wikileaks this week linked Aondoakaa with several corrupt acts and bribery schemes, including demanding and receiving up to $20 million just to sign documents. Saharareporters had documented several pay offs to Aondoakaa in lieu of his services, including N280 million passed on to him by James Ibori to write a letter to Ibori’s UK lawyers 2008. That letter helped to defreeze Ibori’s assets for a few days before a UK high court overturned the ruling.

Among others, Aondoakaa collected several millions of dollars from the government of Cross River State to help gazette its "white elephant project” known as TINAPA.  Early in 2010, Aondokaa received millions of dollars from the Bayelsa state government to sign off on a document establishing a "Law School" in Yenegoa.  He also collected bribes from former Minister of Petroleum resources Dan Etete to pen a letter aimed at thwarting Etete’s trial for corruption by a French court.

A Nigerian weekly newspaper, National Daily, also revealed that the chairperson of the Economic and Financial crimes Commission (EFCC), Mrs. Farida Waziri, was remitting N1.6 billion to Aondoakaa on a monthly basis. Mrs. Waziri reportedly approached the new Attorney General, Mohammed Bello Adoke, to intimate him of the deal but Mr. Adoke is said to have turned down the offer.

Before his removal earlier this year by Goodluck Jonathan, Aondoakaa exploited the relationship with late Yar'Adua to plant mediocre and often unscrupulous cronies who proceeded to bastardize several federal institutions.  In addition to installing Orhii, a recent law graduate in NAFDAC, he also ensured his control of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) by installing his crony, Roland Ewubare, as Executive Secretary despite the man’s lack of prior background in the area of human rights advocacy.

Another Aondoakaa’s protégé and "cousin", Robert Orya, was put at the helm of the Nigerian Export Import Bank (NEXIM). Orya was the Afribank executive who was used by Aondoakaa as a front to purchase a $1 million house in Abuja from a former lawmaker from Ogun State, Kayode Amusan. The house is located at 23 David Bamigboye Street, in an area originally named Zone A. Orya was subsequently appointed the Managing Director of NEXIM.  Yar’Adua also asked Aondoakaa to nominate a new Auditor General of the Federation before he fell terminally ill in November 2009.

The most significant thing about Aondoakaa is that despite all that is known about him by both the Jonathan government and the anti-corruption bodies, he continues the tradition of not being probed or tried in a court of law.  Analysts say that that may be because he also knows a lot about top government officials of both the Yar’Adua and Jonathan governments, and is ruthless and desperate enough to refuse to go down alone, or quietly.


Link: http://www.saharareporters.com/news-page/pfizer-faces-us-foreign-corruption-probe-aondoaka-and-nafdac-paul-orhiis-dimension