{"id":1822,"date":"2017-11-06T08:47:56","date_gmt":"2017-11-06T08:47:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nigerianews.ca\/?p=1822"},"modified":"2017-11-06T08:47:56","modified_gmt":"2017-11-06T08:47:56","slug":"saraki-violates-nigerian-law-again-linked-to-another-firm-in-offshore-tax-haven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nigerianews.ca\/saraki-violates-nigerian-law-again-linked-to-another-firm-in-offshore-tax-haven\/","title":{"rendered":"Saraki Violates Nigerian Law Again, Linked To Another Firm In Offshore Tax Haven"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Samuel Ogundipe & Joshua Olufemi Premium Times November 6, 2017.<\/p>\n

The President of the Nigerian Senate, Bukola Saraki, is in trouble again. On Sunday his name popped up in the global list of infamy exposing some leading world politicians for utilising shell companies in tax havens to either conceal assets, evade tax, or launder funds.<\/p>\n

That revelation, which is capable of attracting fresh criminal charges to the politician, came only 18 months after a similar investigation exposed his ownership of at least three secret offshore firms which he used in concealing assets abroad.<\/p>\n

The expose also came even as the senator is battling to extricate himself from charges relating to false asset declaration. The matter is now at the Court of Appeal after the Code of Conduct Tribunal acquitted and discharged him.<\/p>\n

In the new findings by PREMIUM TIMES and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), Mr. Saraki was found to sit on the board of an offshore entity while he was governor and later member of the Nigerian Senate in violation of his country\u2019s code of conduct law.<\/p>\n

The politician set up Tenia Limited in the Cayman Islands \u2014a notorious tax haven in the Caribbean\u2014 in 2001, and ran it until at least 2015 as director and sole shareholder. It remains unclear what business<\/p>\n

he transacted with the entity and what asset he might have used it to conceal.<\/p>\n

But he failed to list the firm in his assets declaration filings when he was elected governor of Kwara in 2003, in defiance of the Code of Conduct Bureau and Tribunal Act. He also didn\u2019t list the company when he was reelected governor in 2007 and when he was elected senator in 2011.<\/p>\n

The latest details emerged from a leaked data obtained by German newspaper, Suddeutsche Zeitung, and ICIJ from two offshore secrecy providers (Appleby and Asiaciti Trust) and 19 secrecy jurisdictions.<\/p>\n

The leaked 1.4 terabyte data, now infamously dubbed Paradise Papers, contains 13.4 million records and is no doubt one of the biggest leaks in history.<\/p>\n

For a year, more than 380 journalists from 96 media organisations in 67 countries pored over the gigantic data, which cover a period of nearly 70 years, from 1950 to 2016. PREMIUM TIMES is the only Nigerian media organization involved in the investigation.<\/p>\n

More than 120 politicians and country leaders, in nearly 50 countries as well as hundreds of business people across the world were identified in the record as users of offshore entities.<\/p>\n