UK Court Dismisses James Ibori’s Appeal Against £101.5m Confiscation Order
The United Kingdom Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal by former Delta State Governor, James Ibori, against a £101.5 million confiscation order linked to proceeds of corruption, leaving the multi-million-pound forfeiture order intact.
In a judgment delivered on Tuesday, a three-member panel of the court rejected Ibori’s argument that applying an inflation adjustment to funds held in frozen bank accounts was disproportionate and amounted to an excessive interference with his property rights.
The panel comprised Justices Andrew Popplewell and Simon Bryan, and Judge Nicholas Dean.
Ibori had sought to reduce the confiscation order by approximately £4.3 million, from £101.51 million to about £97.21 million, challenging the application of an inflation-related adjustment known as the Change in Value of Money (CVM).
However, the judges ruled that the adjustment was justified under the applicable confiscation legislation, even where the restrained assets had not appreciated in value or generated returns during the period they were frozen.
“There is nothing disproportionate in applying the CVM uplift to assets subject to a restraint order merely because they have not increased in value by as much as the CVM, or at all, when restrained,” the judges held.
CVM is an inflation-related mechanism used by the courts to reflect changes in the monetary value of criminal proceeds when determining confiscation liabilities.
Ibori’s lawyers had argued that funds in frozen accounts could not generate interest or investment returns after being restrained and that requiring him to pay an inflation-adjusted amount would unfairly penalise him for gains he had no opportunity to make.
The court dismissed the argument, explaining that confiscation legislation was designed to establish the present-day monetary equivalent of the criminal benefit obtained, rather than the actual value of assets remaining in the defendant’s possession.
The judges further held that the restraint orders resulted from Ibori’s criminal conduct and the risk that he could dissipate assets to frustrate confiscation proceedings.
According to the court, the consequences of the restraint orders could have been avoided if Ibori had acknowledged the criminal origin of the funds and agreed to return them to the Crown at the earliest opportunity.
“The very lengthy delay in this case was entirely Mr Ibori’s fault in his persistent resistance to the making of the order,” the judges said.
They also ruled that whether Ibori would have to satisfy the confiscation order from other legitimately acquired assets was irrelevant to determining the value of his criminal benefit.
The appeal involved two categories of assets.
The first concerned four Nigerian bank accounts, which Ibori’s lawyers maintained had not generated interest. The inflation adjustment applied to the accounts amounted to £10,265.17.
Although the court acknowledged that the evidence did not clearly establish when the accounts were effectively frozen or the precise period covered by the adjustment, it found that they had probably remained available to Ibori for several years after the frauds.
The second category involved seven accounts held by investment companies in Liechtenstein, Hong Kong, Austria and Nigeria, containing approximately £12.49 million.
The court found that these accounts did not constitute the criminal benefit used in calculating the confiscation order. Rather, the relevant benefit consisted of money transferred into three Access Bank accounts in Nigeria in 2006.
It said the Crown had successfully traced the funds through a complicated network of financial transactions and companies, adding that the accounts subsequently identified by Ibori were not the basis for calculating the confiscation amount.
The judges consequently dismissed his arguments concerning those accounts as misconceived.
Ibori governed oil-rich Delta State between 1999 and 2007. His conviction in the UK followed investigations into a series of financial crimes involving the diversion and laundering of public funds.
The court described his activities as a deliberate and systematic fraud against the people he had been elected to represent, with the proceeds channelled through companies and bank accounts across several countries.
The fraudulent transactions included inflated contracts for the construction of a sports track and the supply of vehicles to the Delta State Government, as well as the diversion of public funds for personal benefit.
The case also involved the sale of Delta State’s shares in V Mobile, a Nigerian telecommunications company. Entities engaged to advise on and negotiate the transaction allegedly received fees that were subsequently diverted to the intended beneficiaries of the fraud, principally Ibori and another governor.
Following his extradition from the United Arab Emirates to the UK in April 2011, Ibori pleaded guilty to 10 counts involving fraud, conspiracy to defraud and money laundering.
He was sentenced to 13 years’ imprisonment on April 17, 2012, and was deported to Nigeria in December 2016 after serving his sentence.
In July 2023, following years of legal proceedings, a UK court ordered him to forfeit £101.5 million, representing the criminal benefit established by the court.
The confiscation proceedings originated from a restraint order granted in 2007 and subsequently replaced in 2008. A substantive hearing took place in 2020, with the court delivering its principal findings in October 2022 before issuing the final confiscation order in July 2023.
Ibori’s latest appeal challenged only the inflation adjustment applied in calculating the confiscation liability, not the underlying finding that he had obtained criminal proceeds.
With the Court of Appeal’s latest ruling, the £101.51 million confiscation order remains enforceable, marking another setback for the former governor in his prolonged legal battle to challenge the recovery of assets linked to his corruption conviction.
Despite his conviction and imprisonment, Ibori has continued to wield considerable political influence in Delta State.
