Lurking behind the current troubles of Oceanic Bank and Intercontinental Bank is the shadowy figure of one man whom investigators from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission believe is the business front forJames Onafeni Ibori, the politically powerful former governor of Delta State.
The man is Henry Imasekha, described by associates as a brilliant accountant who holds management degrees from Oxford and Harvard. In the long charge sheet indicting Mr. Ibori at the Federal High Court in Benin, the EFCC described Imasekha as the “character moving funds in Celtel, Oando and NOTORE Chemical Industries.”
Investigators from the EFCC were last weekend scratching their heads at the extent of role played by Mr. Imasekha and the businesses he controls in the debt crisis that has caused the two banks to nearly implode. The banking crisis caused the Central Bank to fire their top executives and shovel hundreds of billions in public funds into the teetering institutions, which were threatening to take down the whole economy with them.
Mr. Imasekha’s companies, widely believed to actually be controlled by Mr. Ibori, top the list of debtors at Oceanic and Intercontinental, according to a list of Nigeria’s largest debtors in the five banks whose chief executives and top management staff lost their jobs on Friday August 14, in a major shake up announced by the CBN governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi.
Just three of the companies owe the two banks a combined N81 billion, and have failed to pay, according to the Central Bank.
Ascot Offshore Nigeria Ltd, on whose parent board Mr. Imasekha seats as chairman, owes Intercontinental N44.6 billion; Notore Chemical Industries Ltd, owes Oceanic N32.3 billion. And Berkeley Group, another company controlled by Mr. Imasekha, owes Oceanic another N4.3 billion, the CBN says.
The CBN says these non-performing loans hastened the liquidity crisis of the banks, and places a severe burden on the Nigerian public.
Mr. Imasekha’s business is subsumed in the two companies which turn up in many investments in the oil and gas, telecommunications, and fertiliser sectors of the economy. The two companies are Bromley Investment Ltd, and the Brisbane Investment Ltd.
Back in July 2001, federal investigators said Bromley bought 10 percent of the mobile phone company ECONET [now Zain] for N2.2 billion, which it borrowed from the now defunct New Nigerian Bank [NNB] owned by Delta and Edo states. Mr. Ibori was governor in Delta; another close ally, Lucky Igbinedion, was governor in Edo and was subsequently found guilty of stealing state funds.
Investigators say the NNB credit was not based on any collateral, and Mr. Imasekha had no documented relationship with the bank prior to this period.
Investigators say just two days after his company bought the ECONET shares, it sold half of the same shares to the Delta State government with Mr. Ibori’s approval for N2.5 billion. In a mere 48 hours, Mr. Imasekha, believed to be fronting for Mr. Ibori, had turned a profit of more than 100 percent.
In an interview with NEXT, Mr. Imasekha dismissed the EFCC version of events, saying: “At that time, I spent 20 years in banking. I retired as executive director in UBA. Are you telling me that if Jim Ovia, or Fola Adeola or anybody walks into a bank in Nigeria, he won’t be recognised? They won’t know him?
"As an executive director in UBA and before then I had done 20 years in banking in Nigeria, are you telling me that if I walk into a bank, they will tell me that they don’t know me?”
In essence, Mr. Imasekha meant that he bought the shares in his personal recognition, and then secured the loan to pay for it after the fact.
Still with five percent stakes in the troubled but still immensely profitable telecom company, Mr. Imasekha retained his seat on the board which by then had changed ownership and name to become V-Mobile. Five years on, in 2006, the company was again bought by CELTEL, and Bromley sold off its remaining shares for N4.4 Billion.
This same amount was pumped into NAFCON, the National Fertiliser Company of Nigeria located in Onne. The buyer was Mr. Imasekha’s twin company, Brisbane Investment Ltd, which acquired 13% of NAFCON.
The Notore deal
The 2006 Nafcon move brought Mr Imasekha on board as a director of Notore Chemical Industries Limited, which had purchased 39% of NAFCON a year before, in 2005. Notore bought its stakes for $46 Million paid by unguaranteed loan from Oceanic Bank. Confidential EFCC sources told NEXT at the weekend that “these puzzles will be put together in the coming days and weeks.”
Oceanic’s journey to the NAFCON investment began in 2005 when Mike Orugbo, a former senior engineer at the NNPC and CEO of O-Secul Nigeria Ltd, paid $152 Million to buy out 100% of NAFCON assets as part of the privatisation program of the federal government.
Mr. Orugbo who currently sits as a director on Notore’s board, paid an initial $2Million using New Nigerian Bank draft, and borrowed additional $150 million from Oceanic to seal the $152 Million deal.
Investigators say the Oceanic loans were not based on any collateral, describing it as “reckless and even criminal in intent.”
“That investigation showed that Oceanic Bank raised the remaining money on behalf of O-secul for the acquisition of the fertilizer company while there exists no evidence of previous banking relationship between O-Secul and Oceanic Bank, but the Bank felt comfortable in granting the large facility to the company,” stated an EFCC report on the deal.
A royal flush
Mr. Imasekha’s foray into the oil and gas sector bloomed in 2007 when Ascot purchased the Nigerian operations of Wilbros, the oil services company, for $155.25million.
Wilbros Group, a US construction and engineering company, commenced its Nigerian operations in 1962 with the construction of the TransNiger Pipeline, a 170-mile (275-kilometer) crude oil pipeline.
The Houston-based company was was indicted in the US for bribing top Nigerian Government officials between 2003 and 2005 with over $6million. The company in May, 2008 agreed to pay $10.3million in fines.
Following the bribery allegations, the company decided to dispose off of its Nigerian subsidiary.
Ascot then approached Intercontinental for a $200 million loan, from which it paid for the Nigerian subsidiary in 2007.
The 2007 Ascot purchase put Intercontinental in an awkward position with the EFCC, which asked why the loan was secured with 16 million shares in Celtel owned by Delta State and 54 Million shares of Hernderson African Investment Ltd in Union Bank.
Joey Obue, an executive director of Ascot denied the use of Delta State shares. “Your information about Delta shares in Celtel being used as security is not correct. Delta is not a shareholder of Ascot,” Mr Ebue said in response to our enquiry.
The EFCC challenge
It is unclear what direction law enforcement officials want to go with this and other bad loan cases. The EFCC boss, Farida Waziri, said in Lagos Wednesday that the agency will give a week of grace to all the loan defaulters before pursuing them. “We will arrest, prosecute and seize their assets,” Mrs. Waziri said, riding the wave of public disgust at the poor risk management profile of the banks.
The political unrest in the Niger Delta is the challenge Mr. Imasekha faces and he is apparently not alone. “If they don’t allow me to work because there is crisis in the Niger-Delta, where else can I work. All the work we are doing is inside the Niger Delta,” he complained, saying in response to Mrs. Waziri’s threat that, “I read it in the papers, they didn’t write to me. Of course we don’t work on the pages of newspaper, they haven’t written to us.”
Elor Nkereuwem contributed reports to this story.
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