The Presidential candidate of the governing All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, is in fresh hot water this week.
It all has to do with a drug trafficking/money laundering case in the United States, to which Tinubu was linked in the ’90s.
On Tuesday, November 8, reports made the rounds on social media that a U.S. court had just released certified true copies of Tinubu’s alleged drug dealing, money laundering case in the U.S State of Chicago.
Here’s all you need to know about what’s going on…
1. In July 1993, the United States government filed a forfeiture lawsuit in Chicago against bank accounts opened in Tinubu’s name.
At the time, Tinubu was a serving Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
The U.S believed that these bank accounts belonging to Tinubu, held monies that could be traced to narcotic drug dealings–namely heroin.
2. The case followed a probe by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and other agencies into a trafficking network involving Nigerian drug suppliers.
3. The IRS had previously secured warrants in January 1992 to seize almost $2million of the monies traced to Tinubu’s accounts.
4. While residing in Chicago between 1989 and 1991, Tinubu deposited more than $1.8million into one of the accounts, before transferring large sums to another bank, according to the US government.
5. In September 1993, Tinubu settled the case out of court. The Nigerian politician agreed to give up $460,000 to the US government in exchange for the release of the rest of the monies.
6. He was never indicted.
7. The spokesperson for the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Festus Keyamo, says all of the accounts were not opened in Tinubu’s name and that Tinubu’s forfeiture of some monies in his account to the U.S government was not because he was guilty of drug dealing, but because the money forfeited was for taxes.
Here’s Keyamo in his own words:
“Asiwaju was not a party to that case. He was not! He was not a defendant!!!
“It was just accounts that were sued, not him. It was accounts in his name that were sued. So how could you indict him? There were 10 accounts in 3 banks.
“The 10 accounts were not all in his name. There were the ones linked to his mother…he took responsibility for all of them because there were all Tinubu family and all that…his mother was there, his companies were there, his brother was there…he just took responsibility for all of them.
“And at the end of the day, they now pleaded with him when settling that please, don’t come against us if it was found that we wrongly seized your account in the first place.”Â