New Documents Reveal Tinubu’s Family Bought $11m Fraud-Linked Mansion in London

Previously unreported documents from the United Kingdom have revealed that Oluwaseyi Tinubu, Bola Tinubu’s son, bought an $11 million mansion in St. John’s Wood, London, tainted with fraud, Bloomberg reported on May 2.

According to the report, by Bloomberg, the London mansion was previously owned by a businessman accused of $1.6 billion fraud in Nigeria.

During President Muhammadu Buhari’s first term, the legal cases against Diezani Alison-Madueke, former minister of petroleum, involved Kolawole Aluko and Olajide Omokore. According to the lawsuits, Omokore and Aluko won lucrative contracts from Alison-Madueke.

The US government said that both men bribed Alison-Madueke to bypass paying the Nigerian government for most of the crude oil they secured. The trio has since denied the allegations.

A federal judge gave the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) permission to seize several properties that Aluko had acquired in Nigeria and abroad, including the mansion in St. John’s Wood, in June 2016.

Deutsche Bank had foreclosed on the property and appointed receivers to sell it in late 2016. The federal judge’s forfeiture order was still in force when Aranda Oversees Corp., an offshore company, bought the house out of receivership 16 months later.

Bloomberg said that the corporate documents revealed 37-year-old Oluwaseyi is the main shareholder of Aranda Overseas Corp. Aranda paid £9 million ($10.8 million) to Deutsche Bank for the three-floor mansion situated in north London in 2017. The mansion has electric gates, an eight-car driveway, a gym and two gardens.

Although there is no proof showing that Tinubu, Nigeria’s president-elect, had a hand in the purchase, he used the mansion after his son’s company bought it in 2017. Buhari had also visited Tinubu in the same mansion in 2021.

Tinubu’s source of wealth was a big question mark that received no sufficient answer during his campaign as presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

Source: fij