Kola Aluko and Jide Omokore forfeit $53 million to Justice Department

The U.S. Department of Justice has announced that it has recovered about $53.1 million in cash from Nigerian businessmen Kola Aluko and Jide Omokore, which were part of the profits that they obtained from corrupt dealings in the Nigerian oil industry.

The Department of Justice also secured a promissory note with a principal value of $16 million.

Kola Aluko and Omokore reportedly conspired with others to pay bribes to Diezani Alison-Madueke, who controlled Nigeria’s state-owned oil company, from 2011 to 2015. In exchange, Alison-Madueke directed lucrative oil contracts to firms owned by Aluko and Omokore.

The proceeds from those illegally awarded contracts totaled more than $100 million, which was then laundered in and through the United States and used to purchase a variety of assets through shell companies, including luxury real estate in California and New York, as well as the Galactica Star, a 65-meter superyacht. Some of the real estate assets that Aluko owned previously included a $24.5-million home in Bel-Air, Los Angeles, and a luxury penthouse at One57 Tower in New York.

The real estate assets were also used as collateral for loans to Aluko and the shell companies under his control. Those lien holders were compensated as part of the forfeiture process.

The announcement was made by Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. of the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, FBI Assistant Director Luis Quesada of the Criminal Investigative Division, Assistant Director in Charge David Sundberg of the FBI Washington Field Office, and IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) Chief Jim Lee.

The cases were investigated by the FBI’s International Corruption Squad in the Washington Field Office and the IRS-CI, with assistance from the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office.

The cases were prosecuted by trial attorneys Michael W. Khoo and Joshua L. Sohn of the Criminal Division’s Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section.

Significant assistance was provided by the Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs and the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas.

These cases were brought under the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative. The initiative aims to forfeit the proceeds of foreign official corruption and, where appropriate, use those recovered assets to benefit the people harmed by these acts of corruption and abuse of office.

It is led by a group of committed prosecutors in the Criminal Division’s Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section.