The current administration has accused former President Goodluck Jonathan and his then oil minister of accepting bribes and breaking the country’s laws to broker a 1.3 billion oil dollars deal eight years ago, a London court filing shows.
The deal, in which Anglo-Dutch company Royal Dutch Shell and Italian peer Eni jointly acquired the rights to the OPL 245 offshore oilfield, has spawned legal cases spanning several countries.
In papers advancing a London commercial court suit against Shell and Eni, lawyers for the Nigerian government said Jonathan and former oil minister Diezani Alison-Madueke conspired to “receive bribes and make a secret profit”, keeping the government from getting what it was owed from the deal.
“Bribes were paid,” the filing, reviewed by Reuters, states. It says “the receipt of those bribes and the participation in the scheme of said officials was in breach of their fiduciary duties and Nigerian criminal law.”
A spokesman for Jonathan declined to comment and said the former president was in South Africa as part of an election monitoring team.
