Former President, Goodluck Jonathan, yesterday dismissed reports that he received the sum of $200m as kick-back from the Malabu oil deal.
\nJonathan made the denial while responding to a report by an American news website, Buzzfeed, which claimed he got the said amount from the sale of the controversial OPL 245 oil block.
\nIn a statement by his media aide, Ikechukwu Eze, the former President maintained that the Malabu oil deal was struck before his administration.
\nNoting that the report can only be true if he had a time machine, the former President said the, \u201cfake news\u201d was the handiwork of those determined to truncate his rising international profile.
\nThe statement reads, \u201cThe allegations that former President Goodluck Jonathan received $200 million as proceeds from the Malabu Oil deal which were published on a gossip news site, Buzzfeed, and republished by a few other newspapers, is false in its entirety, and is one more in the series of fake news sponsored by those threatened by Dr. Jonathan\u2019s continuously rising profile in the international community.
\n\u201cCommon sense should have shown the purveyors of this slander that the Malabu oil deal far predated the Jonathan regime and it would only make sense for him to be bribed if he had a time machine to go back in time to when the deal was struck.
\n\u201cThe report relied on hearsay evidence from a man of questionable character who provided no substance to back up his false claim.
\n\u201cThe man quoted by the report said he \u2018assumed\u2019 that Dr. Jonathan would be bribed. Since when has the assumption of a crook been enough to smear the reputation of a patriot and international statesman like Dr. Goodluck Jonathan?
\nIn the documents, Italian prosecutors quoted Ednan Agaev, a Russian middleman who helped negotiate the transfer of the oil block to Shell and Eni, as saying that Dan Etete, the former Petroleum Minister at the heart of the oil scandal, said he intended to dole out as much as $400 million in bribes if the deal went through.
\nIf Mr. Etete actually paid out such an amount in bribes to Nigerian officials, \u201cAgaev stated that he would think President Goodluck Jonathan got at least $200 million of this money,\u201d BuzzFeed quoted an excerpt of FBI submissions to Italian authorities as saying.
\nThe revelations were made when the FBI interviewed Mr. Agaev, whom prosecutors also said met with Mr. Jonathan on more than one occasion in Nigeria during the OPL 245 negotiations.
\nMr. Agaev, who was Mr. Etete\u2019s representative in the negotiation, said the convicted former petroleum minister told him of the $400 million bribe to Nigerian politicians when he approached him for his payment.
\nThe Russian also repeated the claim in a follow-up interview with Italian prosecutors, led by Fabio De Pasquale in Milan.
\n\u201cI said that if it\u2019s true, that he paid, he had to pay 400 million, I assume that at least 200 went to Goodluck (Jonathan).\u201d
\n\u201cI heard from Chief (Etete), he claims that he had to pay 400 million, so, if this is true, if he paid 400 million, then most probably the President, as the biggest boss, took at least the half of it,\u201d BuzzFeed wrote, quoting documents prepared by Italian prosecutors.
\nThe former President also dismissed claim by the report that he tutored the children of former Petroleum Minister, Dan Etete.
\nDescribing the report as \u201cclearly ridiculous,\u201d Jonathan maintained that he has never met Etete\u2019s children.
\nHe said,\u201dThe report also wrongly claimed that \u201cJonathan and Etete had known each other for years, according to Shell staff, when Jonathan served as a tutor to Etete\u2019s children while he was a minister\u201d. This claim is clearly ridiculous and nothing can be further from the truth.
\n\u201cIn the first place, the former President couldn\u2019t have been a \u2018tutor\u2019 to Etete\u2019s children without first establishing contact with the family.
\n\u201cThis is because Jonathan met Etete who served as the Petroleum Minister in Gen. Abacha\u2019s military regime for the first time under the succeeding civilian administration, when he was already the deputy Governor of Bayelsa State. Even then, the fact remains that ex-President Jonathan has never met any of Etete\u2019s children.
\n\u201cBesides, Jonathan couldn\u2019t have been anybody\u2019s private tutor during that period, because he was already in the directorate cadre in Oil.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former President, Goodluck Jonathan, yesterday dismissed reports that he received the sum of $200m as kick-back from the Malabu oil deal. Jonathan made the denial while responding to a report by an American news website, Buzzfeed, which claimed he got the said amount from the sale of the controversial OPL 245 oil block. In a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":149325,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[76,26],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n