At some point in his career as a public administrator, Olasupo Shasore, SAN, was being marketed to the people of Lagos State by a former governor, Babatunde Fashola to be his successor. And why not? Shasore was believed to have recorded several years of sterling performances in public administration. The legal luminary was a very important figure in Fashola’s government from 2007 to 2011 as the justice commissioner and the attorney-general.
In fact, Fashola recruited him to join him in steering the ship of Lagos State as he believed they both shared a similar vision and passions for a new Lagos.
After Fashola’s first tenure, Shasore left the cabinet in 2011, a move which many considered as strategic by Fashola to get him ready to take over from him in 2015. Unfortunately, their plans collapsed like a pack of badly arranged cards, forcing him to go into oblivion. He would soon return to public consciousness after his name came up in the scandal involving Process and Industrial Developments Limited (P&ID), an Irish vulture-fund backed shell company, alongside some public officials working for the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation and the Ministry of Petroleum, on alleged bribes totalling $200,000.
In 2010, P&ID entered a 20-year gas contract with Nigeria. Under the terms of the contract, the company was supposed to build and operate a plant to refine natural gas into lean gas in Calabar, the Cross River State capital. The gas was being flared in the Niger Delta anyway; and the federal government thought it was good business to have a company convert some of that wasted, poisonous gas into electricity in the face of Nigeria’s perennial power woes. The contract also stated that the government would install the necessary pipelines and infrastructure and receive the lean gas, free of charge to power Nigeria’s fragile national grid. P&ID would then sell the by-products of propane, ethane and butane on the international market. For some reason, the contract was never executed and in 2012, P&ID dragged Nigeria to court, alleging breach of contract. P&ID won the case and was awarded the sum of $9.5 billion.
On September 19, 2019, a Federal High Court in Abuja convicted two of P&ID’s representatives in Nigeria of charges bordering on money laundering, abuse of office and economic sabotage. The court also ordered P&ID to forfeit all its assets to the Nigerian government.
The company representatives had pleaded guilty to 11 counts of fraud, money laundering, tax evasion and other charges.
P&ID called the judgment of the court in Nigeria a “sham” and a clear case of intimidation. The firm also stated that it had not received communication from the Nigerian authorities on the investigations. The company said it would continue its efforts to identify and seize Nigerian assets to recover its money ($9.5 billion). Later that same year, a Federal Government delegation headed to the UK to persuade a British court to set aside the order permitting P&ID to seize $9.6 billion worth of assets from Nigeria.
Shasore was hired to defend Nigeria’s interest against the monstrous and fraudulent claim. However, Sir Ross Cranston of the UK High Court of Justice Queen’s Bench Division Commercial Court put Shasore’s conduct under scrutiny during the duration of the case and concluded that he was allegedly compromised as he allegedly, deliberately defended the case thinly at the first two stages of the arbitration with the inevitable result that Nigeria would lose the case.
Shasore was alleged to have advised a speedy settlement without investigating the obvious line of defence that P&ID with no experience, assets, or finance, would not perform and then concealed his firm’s involvement. It would seem the chickens have come to roost as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission which was hot on his heels, on Thursday, arraigned him for allegedly laundering the sum of $200,000. EFCC claimed he committed the alleged offense on or about November 18, 2014.
The anti-graft agency claimed in the charge that Shasore allegedly induced a former Legal Director at the Petroleum Ministry, Olufolakemi Adelore, in accepting cash payment of the sum of $100,000 without going through a financial institution. The charge also added that he also allegedly induced and allegedly made another cash payment of $100, 000 to one Ikechukwu Oguine without going through a financial institution. Not only did the anti-graft agency say the sums exceeded the amount permitted by law, it added that the alleged offenses contravened sections 78(c); 1(a) and 16(1)(d) and 18(c) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended) and were punishable under sections 16(6) and 16 (2)(b) of the same Act. Shasore however pleaded not guilty and was granted bail on self-recognizance in the sum of N50 million with two sureties in the like sum. The case has now been adjourned till November 24, 2022, for the commencement of the trial.
Ivory Ukonu is a versatile journalist with many years of experience, with entertainment and society reporting as her area of core competence.
