Theophilus Danjuma, a retired army genera,l and former defence
minister, is one of Nigeria’s richest personalities, courtesy of his ownership
of one of Nigeria’s most lucrative oil blocs and a money spinning shipping
firm.
The retired general is a long time user of offshore entities,
and the Mossac Fonseca files has now exposed another of his companies –
Eastcoast Investments Inc – which he incorporated in Nassau, in the Bahamas, on
March 25, 1997.
At inception, Mr. Danjuma and a certain
Colin Marcel Dixon were directors of the company.
PREMIUM TIMES learnt that the general
formed the company to enable him to do business with Scancem International of
Norway when the later decided to expand its involvement in Africa to include a
project in Nigeria.
But the company soon became embroiled in
a messy bribery scandal, with Scancem, according to court papers, later buying
out Eastcoast Investment from the project on December 1, 2003.
It was later determined that “the money
went mainly to another account, Eastcoast Investment had, to General T.Y.
Danjuma and a certain The Volta Company”.
As the controversy raged, Mr. Danjuma
resigned as director of the company, but we did not sight any document
indicating that he transferred his shareholding to anyone.
A certain Satish Chander Dosaj, who
later died, replaced him. On his death, Elizabeth Dixon, believed to be Mr.
Dixon’s wife, was brought in as director.
But even before incorporating Eastcoast
as a special purpose vehicle to do business with Scancem, Mr. Danjuma had used
several offshore entities in the past, mostly registered in tax havens.
The database, Opencorporates, indicate
that Mr. Danjuma served as director and vice-president of Cross Group Holdings
International, which was registered in Panama on October 15, 1976.
Mr. Danjuma was still in service and was
Chief of Army Staff at the time the company was incorporated. He was also
director of Zara Logistics, a company registered in Cyprus on September 2,
1993.
It remains unclear what businesses Mr.
Danjuma used the companies to transact.
The retired general was also among
global personalities found to maintain secret accounts, operated with codes,
with the Swiss branch of banking giant, HSBC.
He was linked to HSBC account 15731CD,
which was opened in 1993 and closed in 2001.
The documents seen by this newspaper did
not provide details regarding the balances in the account and the use to which
Mr. Danjuma put it.
An elaborate bribery and corruption
Scheme
Court documents obtained by PREMIUM
TIMES independently of the leaked Mossac Fonseca files described Scancem, Mr.
Danjuma’s business partner, as being “involved in extensive bribery and
corruption in a number of countries in Africa”.
The company’s elaborate bribery
operation in the continent was supervised and coordinated by the head of its
Africa business, Tor Egil Kjelsaas, who also had a warm relationship with the
retired general and his company.
It was revealed that sometimes, Mr
Kjelsaas withdrew cash from banks in London and Luxembourg and flew with it to
bribe local contacts in Africa, especially in Ghana.
Some of the monies were handed over to
local contacts in envelopes while others were transferred to accounts in
Luxembourg, Switzerland and other places.
But while Mr Kjelsaas was helping to
coordinate Scancem bribery operation across Africa, he was alleged to have kept
some of the bribe money for himself.
The document also revealed how Messrs.
Danjuma, Kjelsaas and Dixon, who himself was an employee of Scancem, allegedly
collaborated to obtain a $3.2 million buyout from Scancem.
Scancem operations in Nigeria started in
1997 but was short-lived because the company incurred huge losses which the
court blamed on Mr. Kjelsaas, who left the company in 1999 but was retained as
a consultant until 2001 and was involved in the company’s operation at the
time.
“Kjelsaas drained Scancem’s involvement
in Nigeria of significant funds,” the court revealed.
Due to the huge losses, Scancem opted to
walk out from the Nigerian operations, but its contract with Eastcoast, which
was signed under Mr. Kjelsaas’ management, required it to pay out a significant
sum to Eastcoast before it could exit the partnership. If Scancem had taken
this option, its losses would have been very significant. So, it decided to buy
out Eastcoast’s shares in the business.
In July 2003, before buying out
Eastcoast, Scancem hired Hibis, a private investigative company to make
enquiries about the ownership of Eastcoast, the company discovered that “most
of the commission moneys paid to Eastcoast went toMr. Dixon and a company,
Tormead Ltd.
Further investigation showed that Mr
Kjelsaas was the real owner of Tormean Ltd. According to court documents,
$190,000.00 was transferred to Tormead Ltd from the contractual commission paid
to Eastcoast.
On December 1, 2003, Scancem bought out
Eastcoast for $3.2 million. Once the money was paid, most of it was transferred
to another account operated by Eastcoast, some to Mr. Danjuma, while
$790,000.00 was transferred to The Volta Company, a firm believed to be linked
with Mr Kjelsaas.
Mr. Danjuma did not answer calls made by
PREMIUM TIMES to his known mobile number. Neither did he respond to text
messages seeking comments for this story.
SOURCE: #PanamaPapers expose General Theophilus
Danjuma's offshore company - Premium Times Nigeria
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