Tinubu named finalist in OCCRP’s 2024 list of organised crime and corruption

President Bola Tinubu has been named a finalist for the 2024 ‘corrupt person of the year’ in a list compiled by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

Established in 2012 by the OCCRP, the ironic honour highlights individuals extensively involved in organised crime and corruption.

The latest compilation was published on Tuesday.

The OCCRP said Tinubu was nominated by readers, journalists, person of the year judges, and others in the project’s global network.

In May 2023, an OCCRP investigation found that Tinubu, president-elect at the time, was linked to 20 properties his associates bought in the United Kingdom (UK) when he was serving as governor of Lagos.

According to the report, 17 of the properties were bought by Oladipo Eludoyin, Tinubu’s associate and a director of Aranda Overseas Corp., between 2004 and 2007.

Some 24 hours before the report was published, a Bloomberg investigation exposed that Seyi, Tinubu’s son, is the main shareholder of Aranda Overseas Corp.—an offshore company he used in purchasing a $10.8 million property under probe by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

The OCCRP said a year after the president forfeited $460,000 to the US government in 1993 as proceeds of narcotics trafficking, Abeeb Holdings Limited, an offshore company registered in Gibraltar with Tinubu as the beneficial owner, bought Flat 9 at 96-100 New Cavendish Street in London.

The OCCRP said it later found that Eludoyin is also the beneficial owner of 17 UK properties through three offshore companies registered in the British Virgin Islands.

The organization added that Babatunde Fashola, Tinubu’s former aide and successor, and Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the incumbent governor of Lagos, also had a hand in controlling Aranda Overseas Corp.’s internal affairs.

Court documents from a Chicago case had claimed that in the early 1990s, Tinubu was linked to bank accounts allegedly used to launder money for a heroin ring in Chicago.

However, the president has dismissed all allegations and has instead been vocal about the need for African leaders to collaborate and tackle the “continental” challenge.

Besides Tinubu, Kenyan President William Ruto is also named a finalist.

The OCCRP said an unprecedented number of people wrote in to nominate Ruto for “Person of the Year” in organised crime and corruption.

The comments submitted with the nominations were full of frustration and despair, the OCCRP said.

A special ‘Lifetime non-achievement award’ was given to Teodoro Mbasogo, Equatorial Guinea’s president and one of the longest-serving dictators in the world.

“Instead of developing the country into a model for Africa, he has squandered its natural resources, living an obscenely lavish lifestyle while the rest of the population suffers in poverty,” the report said.

Joko Widodo, former president of Indonesia; Sheikh Hasina, former prime minister of Bangladesh; and Gautam Adani, an Indian businessman, were also listed as finalists.

SYRIA’S AL-ASSAD NAMED WINNER

The OCCRP named ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as the 2024 corrupt person of the year.

Al-Assad was said to have led his country’s production and distribution of Captagon, a highly addictive street drug, earning billions of dollars to operate prisons and maintain his brutal authoritarian rule.

The OCCRP said the award is given to the person who has done “the most to wreak havoc around the world through organised crime and corruption”.

The report said al-Assad created chaos for Syrians and the broader region.

Past winners include Russian President Vladimir Putin; María Consuelo Porras, Guatemala’s attorney general; Jair Bolsonaro, former president of Brazil; and the Romanian parliament.