Debra LaPrevotte

In 2006 I was asked to go investigate some of the $5 billion that was looted or stolen from Nigeria under President Sani Abacha. And what I found is that while he was president, he was literally gifting away the natural resources of the country –I think people don’t understand the ravages of corruption because the victims are the people — and it’s layer after layer after layer of showing why this appears to be criminal conduct

Narrator

From afar, corruption is seen as a widespread but distant problem. As citizens, our perception of it is blurry. But sometimes something or someone leads us to look more closely, and it becomes clear how much it costs, to each of us personally and to the community in general. 17 years ago, a giant magnifying glass was pointed at one of the most controversial and complex cases of international corruption: a case surrounding a Nigerian oil concession called OPL 245. Holding the lens was Debra LaPrevotte, someone with nearly 30 years of experience investigating kleptocracy. Debra tells Segreta this dark story. It’s a story of bribery, greed, and collusion between politicians and oil companies, a case that is still the subject of international investigations.

Debra LaPrevotte

My name is Debra LaPrevotte and for the past 27 years I have investigated high level political corruption, foreign corruption, mostly 20 years with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the FBI in Washington, D.C. and for the last seven years, I work for The Sentry, a group founded by actor George Clooney and his partner John Prendergast and I investigate greed that fuels conflict in Central Africa.

In 2006 I was investigating political corruption. Nowadays you would call that kleptocracy And so I started to investigate the moneys that left Nigeria under Abacha. And what I found is that while he was president, he was literally gifting away the natural resources of the country. And one of those resources was a Nigerian oil block called OPL 245, a deep-sea ocean oil block worth billions of dollars. And under President Abacha, that oil block was given to a company called Malabu Oil and Gas that was owned 50% by Abacha son, Mohammed Abacha, and the then minister of Petroleum, Daniel Etete.

Narrator

OPL means Oil Prospecting License and the number 245 indicates a particular offshore block in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria where significant oil reserves are believed to exist. The Nigerian Constitution and a law called the Petroleum Act gave the federal government of Nigeria ownership of the oil reserves on the Nigerian mainland and in its territorial waters. Citizens can, of course, acquire and own land anywhere in Nigeria, but while surface rights are held by citizens, subsurface rights are held by the federal government and granted to corporations for exploitation.

Debra LaPrevotte

In this case, when the company Malabu Oil was given the exploration license to look at OPL 245, it had only been a company for several weeks. And that’s very unusual for a company that was just incorporated to get a very high level, very lucrative oil lifting contract. Also, the owners of the company hid their ownership through fake names. And so, you know, it’s things like that where you start looking into it and you’re like, well, why didn’t Mohamed Abacha use his real name? Why did he use the name Mohammed Sanni? Why didn’t Daniel Etete use his real name? He used an alias. I mean, those red flags start showing you that there was an attempt to hide their true ownership. There’s something wrong and something criminal about this deal.

Narrator

Malabu Oil and Gas was awarded OPL 245 in April 1998. In June 1998, Mohamed Abacha died at the presidential residence in Abuja – reportedly of a heart attack. Between 2001 and 2006 the license was first revoked and then returned to Malabu and Daniel Etete. In 2011, the Nigerian government, now under President Goodluck Jonathan, stepped in, ostensibly to broker a settlement of the dispute over OPL 245, which had been valued at more than $20 billion dollars.

Debra LaPrevotte

I believe that the transactions told the story.  In this particular investigation, this oil block was sold for $1.1 billion. It’s a very interesting story. When President Abacha died, somehow, mysteriously, his son, Muhammad, was removed from the company. Although Muhammad Abacha was unaware of it. And then the owner of Malabu wanted to sell the oil block. And when he tried to sell it, Mohammed Abacha filed a legal action in Nigeria saying, well, wait a second, I owned 50% of that company, you can’t sell it without my knowledge. And so there were court records that I was able to review. But what was interesting is to get clear title the government of Nigeria, this is under the attorney general, Mohammed Adoke, under President Goodluck Jonathan in Nigeria, they stepped in and took possession of the oil block so that they could sell it to the Italian oil company ENI and Shell, the Netherland company. And you have to ask yourself, why did the government of Nigeria step in to sell an oil block that they don’t own? And as soon as the $1.1 billion was transferred into the account of the government of Nigeria at JPMorgan Chase, the entire amount was transferred to a bank account in Switzerland. That bank refused it and said: No, thank you, we don’t want to be involved. And they sent it back. Then the entire amount got sent to another bank account in Lebanon. That bank turned it down and sent it back. It sat in a bank account until eventually $800 million was transferred into bank accounts in Nigeria.

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A red flag is here. And Debra LaPrevotte finally finds the answer to this question:

Debra LaPrevotte

The allegations were that they stepped in because money from that oil block was being shared with a very well-connected political people within Nigeria.

Narrator

This is a very complicated case, with deep international connections. In 2011, the license was re-allocated to Shell and Eni, two of the world’s largest oil companies. International law enforcement, which had suspected fraud and corruption for years, had to sift through a mountain of documents and interviews. British authorities were investigating.  Italian authorities investigated. In 2017, Italian prosecutors brought charges against Eni, Shell, and some of their senior executives. In 2021, an Italian court acquitted Eni and its managers of all charges. The case came to an abrupt end in July 2022, when the Italian Attorney General formally abandoned the appeal against the acquittal. In 2018, a Nigerian court charged Daniel Etete and several others with money laundering and corruption. So how did Debra LaPrevotte manage to find the needle in the haystack?

Debra LaPrevotte

I wouldn’t say there were new techniques used in this investigation. What I would say is they were very thorough techniques. In other words, when you see the names that were used to incorporate Malabu Oil and Gas and you look into them, that’s just good old fashioned law enforcement investigation. And you find that the names were aliases because I had looked at the Abacha family already for years. When I got the OPL 245 case, I was familiar with the fact that Mohammed Abacha often used the name Mohammed Sani to hide that he was President Abacha son. So, it’s really on this investigation it’s not the fact that you’re using a new technique, it is the fact that you have got to be thorough and patient and it’s layer after layer after layer of showing why this appears to be criminal conduct.

It’s not easy. Yeah, it’s not easy, is it? What you what people don’t understand is that some of these investigations take years, years to accomplish. People always believe that an FBI agent’s life is very exciting. But There is always a paper trail So mostly it is a lot of on the ground analysis and interviews and conversations. You have to get your hands on those documents. You don’t know what one page is going to be vital evidence. So, every page has to be analyzed. Like, what does this say? Is this a duplicate? Is that original? Do I What is this telling me in the movement of the money, Who benefited? Who ended up with money in their pocket? I mean, there are times where I received boxes of 50, like 57 boxes of bank records. Well, someone has to go through all of those bank records, and that was usually me.

Narrator

The United States is a member of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, an international agreement adopted in October 2003 as part of a global effort to combat corruption and recover the proceeds from the theft of valuable assets from counties.

After years of hard work, Debra and her team achieved their goal of returning a large portion of the stolen money. In 2022 alone, the US returned more than 330 billion dollars to Nigeria. But what about the future? Where are the other Debra LaPrevottes of the world? How will they fight corruption when digital currencies make transactions anonymous, beyond the reach of national authorities?

Debra LaPrevotte

Most foreign leaders are over 50 years old and many over 60 years old, they don’t want digital currency they want portable assets: gold, cash, diamonds, things that they can touch, feel and put in their pocket. But 10, 20 years from now if everything is digital that will severely alter the way we investigate financial crimes.

Narrator

The exploration license for OPL 245 expired in 2021 without the Federal Government of Nigeria converting the exploration license into a production license, meaning that, to date, the oil field has not produced a single barrel.

Debra LaPrevotte

I think people don’t understand the ravages of corruption on the people of every country that suffers under a corrupt government because the victims are the people that are suffering from lack of food, lack of education, lack of health care, because the money isn’t there to because it’s been looted and stolen. So, my motivation has always been to be part of the good fight, to be part of the solution that helps to fight corruption.

Narrator

This is a story of corrupt dealings with valuable resources that raises questions around accountability and transparency in the allocation of valuable natural assets. Because of the determination of a team of international investigators, the Nigerian OPL 245 scandal has led to legal battles and political fallout in several countries. But we can be sure that corruption continues and the need for skillful investigators will not end any time soon.

A special thanks to Debra LaPrevotte, who allowed us to benefit from her 27 years of experience, as a specialist in investigating international corruption, money laundering, and kleptocracy.

In the next episode will hear the story of a bank heist called the 21st-century heist, the story of a t-shirt and a tuxedo that both revealed and disguised who wanted to be anonymous, the story of a young prosecutor and a borderless investigation.