According to a Bloomberg investigation, Seyi Tinubu, the son of Nigerian President-elect Bola Tinubu, has been linked to the purchase of a “fraud-tainted” $10.8 million property in North London.
In 2017, Seyi was said to have purchased the property through an offshore company called Aranda Overseas Corp., in which he is named as the main shareholder.
The investigation revealed that there is no suggestion that Tinubu was personally involved in the acquisition of the property.
However, a 2021 report by Premium Times indicated that Tinubu lived in the property during a medical trip to London.
The property in question was reportedly seized by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in 2016 from Kola Aluko, an ally of Diezani Alison-Madueke, the former minister of petroleum.
During the first term of President Buhari, his administration initiated legal cases against Alison-Madueke, Aluko, and Olajide Omokore, who won lucrative contracts during her tenure.
The US government alleged in a 2017 forfeiture lawsuit filed in Texas that the pair bribed Alison-Madueke by funding her lavish lifestyle and failed to pay the state energy company for most of the crude they received.
In June 2016, a federal judge in Abuja granted a request by the EFCC to seize more than a dozen properties that Aluko had acquired in Nigeria and abroad, including the one in St. John’s Wood. That forfeiture order was still in force when Seyi Tinubu bought the house out of receivership 16 months later.
Bloomberg stated that the spokesperson for Buhari declined to comment on the allegation, as did the spokespersons for the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, and the EFCC.
