Kola Aluko admits paying rent for Diezani’s mum

The United Kingdom has formally made a request to the Swiss authorities to interrogate Mr. Kola Aluko, the Nigerian oil magnate at the centre of a probe into controversial oil deals involving former petroleum minister Diezani Allison Mdueke the London Sunday Times reported yesterday.

The newspaper said the formal application by the UK government has now been sent to the Swiss Attorney General for implementation.

Mr Aluko told the British Sunday Times newspaper that he was responsible for paying rent for Mrs. Beatrice Agama, the former minister’s mother. He also said he ensured that food was brought to the minister’s mother at the St. John’s Wood property. Last month, a UK court approved the confiscation of funds belonging to Mrs. Agama. The court also authorized the seizure of funds belonging to Melanie Spencer, the wife of a Ghanaian oil tycoon, Kevin Okyere, implicated in the money laundering investigation involving the former minister.

According to the report in The Sunday Times, “Aluko confirmed a probe over potential violations of the UK Proceeds of Crime Act and Bribery Act but professed his innocence. He said: ‘I’m willing to co-operate with anybody. I have nothing to hide.’”
The British newspaper also reported that, in early 2011, Mr. Aluko’s Atlantic Energy “signed a lucrative strategic alliance giving it rights to sell oil from four big blocks on behalf of Nigeria’s national oil company. Before the oil price crashed, Aluko said the commercial value of the contract was an estimated $7bn.”

The paper added: “Aluko admitted he paid the rent on a flat in St John’s Wood in London for Alison-Madueke’s mother, as well as bringing her ‘hams, sausages and orchids’. He said these were simply gifts to a friend, given long after Atlantic had signed its deal.”

Mr. Aluko’s Atlantic Energy company is at the center of a reported $6 billion heist from the Nigerian treasury.
Mr. Aluko’s statement to the UK newspaper is highly significant because it is the first public admission by the flamboyant and controversial oil tycoon of financial exchanges between him and Mrs. Alison-Madueke.

The former Petroleum Minister was arrested last month in London and later granted bail by the anti-corruption unit of the UK National Crime Agency.

Mrs. Alison-Madueke had handpicked Mr. Aluko, who has Swiss citizenship, for lucrative, shady deals in the Nigerian oil sector.