draining development.pdf - Khazar University

422 Draining Development?commercial business of their own; they were simply incorporated oracquired to receive and transmit monies through recognized banks.Many of the companies utilized by the Abacha family and theiraccomplices were also bearer share companies. All of these were incorporatedin British Virgin Islands, and the shares were generally held byBagudu or Mohammed Abacha. Bearer share companies are used bymoney launderers because, unless a bank maintains physical possessionof the shares, it is impossible to know with certainty who, at any givenmoment, is the company’s true owner.Many of the accounts owned or controlled by the Abachas were specialname accounts, that is, accounts held under a special name or pseudonym,thus disguising the identity of the real account holder fromthose who make transfers to or receive transfers from the accounts.These accounts were generally set up in London or New York by CitibankPrivate Bank. Numbered accounts were used extensively in Switzerland,at about a dozen different (well-known) banks. A number of trusts werealso set up in Guernsey (with bank accounts in London), British VirginIslands, and Nassau, in The Bahamas, with bank accounts in Switzerland.Apartments purchased by the Abachas in Kensington (London)were owned by companies incorporated in Isle of Man.Finally, security vote monies were used to purchase Nigerian par bonds.These par bonds were issued by Nigeria in exchange for rescheduled bankloans. The government paid interest by way of coupon payments on thebonds, and the government would purchase the bonds at face value onexpiry. In the meantime, there was a limited market in the par bonds.Destinations, assistance, and the recovery processOn September 30, 1999, four months after democratically elected PresidentObasanjo took office, Nigeria informed the Federal Police Office inSwitzerland of its intention to request mutual assistance from Switzerlandfor an ongoing investigation against the friends and family of thelate Sani Abacha. The original Nigerian request was accompanied by arequest for interim freezing orders made by Enrico Monfrini, a Swisslawyer in Geneva instructed by the Nigerian government. The freezingorders were made two weeks later.However, as the investigation showed later, many of the bank accountsidentified in the original request for assistance had been closed, and the