FORMER Goldman Sachs banker Elias Preko has been sentenced to four-and-a-half years imprisonment by a London court for laundering $5m on behalf of former Delta State governor James Ibori.
Mr Preko, 54, is a Ghanaian financial expert who worked for Chief Ibori and used his expertise to help the former governor hide stolen money in several accounts worldwide. A Harvard graduate, Mr Preko is now the fifth of Chief Ibori’s associates to be jailed for assisting his corruption after the ex-governor’s wife, mistress, sister and lawyer were all convicted by British courts in previous trials.
Sentenced yesterday, a jury at London’s Southwark Crown Court had unanimously convicted Mr Preko of two offences of money-laundering between March 2003 and April 2008. He was charged with assisting Chief Ibori in channelling stolen money through a web of offshore trusts and shell companies.
Mr Preko had left Goldman Sachs before he committed the offences and the bank is not accused of any wrongdoing. During his trial, the court heard of how Mr Preko tried to open accounts on Chief Ibori’s behalf when he still worked there but this was not authorised by the bank.
Sentencing Mr Preko, Judge Anthony Pitts, said: “The evidence against you in this case was very clear. You knew what Mr Ibori was doing and you were actively assisting him.
“You are a man of considerable ability and intelligence, highly educated, capable of making lots of money perfectly legitimately. You had the ability to walk away but you chose to involve yourself with him as a professional man, against the code of upstanding conduct for men in your position.”
During the trial, the court had heard that during a decade at Goldman Sachs where he was in charge of private clients in sub-Saharan Africa, Mr Preko had earned $12m in salaries and received a severance payment of $3m when he left the bank. Mr Pitts noted that the sums Mr Preko had helped launder were relatively small amounts in a case where the sums stolen are almost beyond belief.
Chief Ibori’s total fortune is not known but during his sentencing in April 2012, Judge Pitts put the amount stolen covered by his guilty pleas at £50m. However, the judge added that this may be a ludicrously low fraction of his total booty.
Sentenced last year, Chief Ibori is serving 13 years in a British jail after pleading guilty to 10 counts of fraud and money-laundering. He is the most senior Nigerian politician to be held to account for the corruption that has blighted the country and the British court is seeking to trace all of his stolen loot stashed away in numerous locations and accounts.
During a three-week confiscation hearing earlier this year, prosecutors sought a court order for the confiscation of £90m in assets that they said were the proceeds of Chief Ibori’s crimes but the hearing ended inconclusively and will restart next year. Chief Ibori's case was tried in London because some of the money was laundered in Britain and some of the defendants were based there.
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