The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has vowed to arrest former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Chief Dan Etete, former Attorney General of the Federation, Mohammed Adoke and Eni manager Roberto Casula “anywhere they are found.”

The trio have long been implicated in the Malabu oil deal of 2011.

Investigators say the deal was fraudulent.

On Wednesday, April 17, 2019, Justice D.Z. Senchi of the Federal Capital Territory High Court, Jabi, Abuja granted the prayers of the EFCC and issued a warrant of arrest on the former ministers and the company boss.

What is this Malabu oil deal everyone has been talking about?

Oil Producing License (OPL) 245 contains about 9 billion barrels of crude oil. It is located in Nigeria's oil rich Niger Delta region.

It is regarded as one of Africa's richest oil blocs. 

Etete was Petroleum Minister in the administration of military dictator, General Sani Abacha, who ruled Nigeria from 1993 to 1998.

Using the powers of his office, investigators say, Etete illicitly awarded OPL 245 to himself in 1998 through his company, Malabu Oil and Gas, at a time when the federal government was encouraging indigenous companies to acquire oil blocks at a reduced signature bonus of $20 million.

On July 2, 2001, democratically elected President Olusegun Obasanjo revoked Malabu’s ownership of OPL 245 and awarded the oil block to Shell without making the process public. 

Malabu challenged the award of the block to Shell. 

In 2006, following an out of court settlement, OPL 245 was returned to Malabu. 

In 2011, Shell and Eni paid for the oil field. 

Because they did not want to deal directly with Etete who had been convicted in France for his part in a separate money laundering scheme, Shell and Eni wired the money to an account belonging to the federal government of Nigeria domiciled with JP Morgan bank, London.

Investigators say Shell and Eni paid the Goodluck Jonathan administration $1.3billion for OPL 245. 

According to the case file, the federal government of Nigeria under Jonathan, thereafter transferred $801million of the money into accounts controlled by Malabu and Etete in Nigeria.

Investigators say the money was then shared to various public officials and cronies in Nigeria as bribes; with the Nigerian government receiving only $210m USD as signature bonus on OPL 245.

This case has been heard in several countries

Reuters writes that; “the $1.3 billion deal has spawned legal cases spanning several countries and involving Nigerian government officials and senior Eni and Shell executives.

“An ongoing case in Milan alleges that roughly $1.1 billion of the total was siphoned to agents and middlemen”.

A court in Milan has already convicted middlemen Emeka Obi and Italian Gianluca Di Nardo for their roles in the deal. 

Shell and Eni have for long maintained that they did no wrong. 

On the arrest warrant issued on its manager by the Abuja court, Eni called the move "disproportionate and detrimental" to the rights of its manager.

"These warrants seem to have originated from the failure by the Nigerian Judicial Authorities to notify and serve the pending proceedings to the Eni managers as per international procedure for the last two years," the Italian company added in a statement.

The EFCC said in a statement that the defendants have repeatedly failed to appear before the courts.

According to the EFCC, the Nigerian police, INTERPOL and other law enforcement agencies around the world now have the authority to arrest the men anywhere they are found on the planet.

Etete and Adoke are currently outside of Nigeria’s shores. 

Adoke has promised to exonerate himself through the courts. He said he was only following orders of then President Jonathan in the entire deal.

“The honorable judge was misled by the EFCC to grant the warrant. Justice Binta Nyako ruled in April 2018 that I was only carrying out a presidential order in the OPL 245/Malabu transaction and that I had no case to answer. That naturally ends the EFCC case against me but the agency has chosen this path and I will use all legal means to exonerate myself,”Adoke said in a statement. 

The federal government sues a bank

JP Morgan Chase bank has acknowledged that it knew Dan Etete was going to benefit from the deal when it transferred over $800 million of Nigeria’s oil money to the former minister.

In January 2018, the federal government of Nigeria sued "JP Morgan Chase for more than $875million, accusing the bank of negligence in transferring funds from a disputed 2011 oilfield deal to a company controlled by the country’s former oil minister”.

The federal government had stated in its suit that: “JP Morgan acted with gross negligence by allowing the transfer of the money without further checks”.

The government posits that JP Morgan should have known that, under Nigerian law, the money should never have been transferred to a third party.

“If the defendant acted with reasonable care and skill and/or conducted reasonable due diligence, it would or should have known or at least suspected ... that it was being asked to transfer funds to third parties who were seeking to misappropriate the funds from the claimant and/or that there was a significant risk that this was the case,” some parts of the suit instituted by the federal government, read.

JP Morgan had previously said that it “considers the allegations made in the claim to be unsubstantiated and without merit”.

Oil rich Nigeria has been plagued with corruption and sharp practices in the management of its resources.