A UK court has dismissed an appeal by former Delta State Governor, James Ibori, seeking to reduce a £101.51 million asset forfeiture order by approximately £4.3 million.
The three-member panel of the UK court, comprising Justices Andrew Popplewell and Simon Bryan, and Judge Nicholas Dean, ruled on Tuesday that the application of inflation adjustments to funds held in frozen bank accounts was lawful and not disproportionate.
Ibori had challenged the inclusion of inflation adjustments in calculating the value of certain assets, arguing that the decision unfairly increased the amount he was required to forfeit from approximately £97.21 million to £101.51 million.
He maintained that applying the adjustment to money in frozen accounts violated his property rights under the European Convention on Human Rights, as he could neither access the funds nor invest them to generate returns after they were restrained.
However, the court rejected the argument, holding that the adjustment was consistent with the applicable confiscation legislation, which allows criminal proceeds to be assessed based on their inflation-adjusted monetary value. 
“There is nothing disproportionate in applying the CVM uplift to assets subject to a restraint order merely because they have not increased in value by as much as the CVM, or at all, when restrained,” the judges ruled.
CVM, meaning change in value of money, is an inflation-related adjustment used in confiscation proceedings to determine the present-day monetary value of criminal proceeds.
The judges also held that the restraint order imposed on the assets resulted from Ibori’s criminal conduct and the risk that he could dispose of the funds to frustrate confiscation proceedings.
According to the court, the impact of the restraint order could have been avoided if Ibori had disclosed the criminal proceeds and agreed to return them to the Crown at the earliest opportunity.
The panel blamed the prolonged confiscation proceedings on Ibori’s persistent opposition to the order, describing the delay as entirely his fault.
“The very lengthy delay in this case was entirely Mr Ibori’s fault in his persistent resistance to the making of the order,” the judges said.
They further ruled that whether Ibori would have to settle the adjusted amount from other assets was irrelevant to determining the value of the criminal benefit he obtained.
The court explained that confiscation legislation requires offenders to repay the value of their criminal benefit, regardless of whether they still possess the original proceeds or whether the assets available to them have appreciated in value.
“For these reasons, Mr Ibori’s appeal is dismissed,” the court concluded.
Dispute over Nigerian, foreign bank accounts
The appeal centred on two categories of assets identified during the confiscation proceedings.
The first involved four Nigerian bank accounts which Ibori’s lawyers argued had not generated interest. The inflation adjustment applied to the accounts amounted to £10,265.17.
Although the court acknowledged that the evidence did not clearly establish when the accounts were effectively frozen or the precise period covered by the adjustment, it found that the accounts had probably remained accessible to Ibori for several years after the fraudulent transactions.
The second category involved seven accounts held by investment companies in Liechtenstein, Hong Kong, Austria and Nigeria, with a combined balance of £12.49 million.
The judges found that those accounts were not the basis for calculating the criminal benefit underlying the confiscation order.
Rather, the relevant proceeds in that category were funds paid into three Access Bank accounts in Nigeria in 2006.
The court said the Crown had traced the money through a complicated network of transactions and companies, adding that the accounts identified by Ibori’s lawyers were not the accounts on which the disputed confiscation calculation was based.
It consequently dismissed his arguments concerning those accounts as misconceived.
Background to Ibori’s conviction
Ibori governed oil-rich Delta State between 1999 and 2007 before his conviction in the United Kingdom for fraud and money laundering.
The UK Court of Appeal had previously described his activities as a deliberate and systematic fraud against the people he was elected to represent, with the proceeds allegedly channelled through companies and bank accounts across several countries.
One of the transactions involved the sale of Delta State’s shares in V Mobile, a Nigerian telecommunications company.
The court found that companies established to advise on and negotiate the transaction received fees which were subsequently diverted to the intended beneficiaries of the fraud, principally Ibori and another governor.
Ibori was extradited from the United Arab Emirates to the UK in April 2011 to face criminal charges.
He subsequently pleaded guilty to 10 counts, including conspiracy to defraud and money laundering, and was sentenced to 13 years’ imprisonment on April 17, 2012.
Following his conviction, British authorities pursued confiscation proceedings to recover assets linked to his criminal activities.
He was deported to Nigeria in December 2016 after serving his prison sentence.
