Leadership (Abuja)
Ese Awhotu
19 May 2008
As the Federal Government gets set to commence what it called the mother of all probes in the oil sector, officials of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and an unnamed political party have been found guilty of receiving over $6.3 million bribe from a foreign oil and gas company, Wilbros Group, to award a $387 million contract for engineering, procurement and construction work on the eastern gas pipeline project, known as the Eastern Gas Gathering System (EGGS)
The deal was said to have been struck between late 2003 and 2005 under the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo.
A criminal information, which emanated from the department of justice in Washington at the weekend, said employees of Willbros Group and Willbros International agreed to, and made corrupt payments totaling more than $6.3 million to Nigerian government officials to assist in obtaining and retaining the $387 million contract for the EGGS.
Willbros Group Inc. (Willbros Group) is a publicly traded company that provides construction, engineering and other services in the oil and gas industry, and Willbros International Inc. (Willbros International), the wholly owned subsidiary through which it conducts International operations.
According to the criminal information in exchange for the EGGS project, the employees of Willbros corruptly paid, promised to pay and authorised payments to officials of the NNPC and its subsidiary, the National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS); a senior official in the executive branch of the Nigerian Federal Government; officials of a multinational oil company serving as the operator of the EGGS joint venture and a political party, totaling over $6.3 million.
Although the criminal information did not mention the name of the political party involved, but LEADERSHIP checks revealed that the top echelons of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) were actively involved in the scam, and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is currently providing the legal framework required by the international investigators to unravel those behind the deal. Investigations are ongoing and being handled by FBI's Washington field office and International Revenue Service Criminal Investigation division.
The rot in the NNPC has been a subject of discourse national and internationally. The NNPC, which was established to develop the nations oil and gas wealth and regulate the industry, and is the majority shareholder in certain joint ventures with multinational oil companies. NAPIMS manages NNPC's investments in the joint ventures. Among other functions, NAPIMS and NNPC approve the award of major oil and gas construction projects to private contractors, such as Willbros Group.
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It is indeed very incredible and very disturbing for a political party to have targeted for bribe by a foreign company. This is an indirect way of controlling the polity of the country by financing the activities of a party in order to impose some candidates that had been secretly groomed to dance to the tune of some foreign forces since, as the dictum goes, he who pays the piper dictates the tune. So, the truth of the on-going situation in the present set-up is progressively being revealed and, again, it is not surely unconnected with the… [Read Full Text]