Court documents
1) R v Ibori (2013) 2012/2916/A4; [2013] EWCA Crim 815 (Appeal Against Sentence)
2) R v Onuigbo (aka Okoronkwo) 201204789 C4; [2014] EWCA Crim 65 (Appeal Against Confiscation Order)
3) R v Preko 201400201 C1; [2015] EWCA Crim 42 (Appeal Against Conviction)
4) R v Nakanda 2015/3694/B4; [2016] EWCA Crim 2302 (Appeal Against Conviction)
5) Ibori, R (on the application of) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department CO/6416/2016; [2017] EWHC 1207 (Admin) (Habeas Corpus Claim)
6) R v Ibori & Ors; 2017/01351/C4, 2017/03178/C4, 2017/02836/C4, 2017/03975/C4 & 2017/03260/C4; [2018] EWCA 2291 (Crim) (Appeal following alleged police corruption)
7) R v Gohil & Preko; 201702190 C4, 201704183 C4; [2018] EWCA Crim 140 (Appeal following alleged police corruption)
8) 8) R v Ibori & Onuigbo; T2011 7192; T2008 7792 (on-going confiscation)
James Ibori, two-term Governor of Delta State from 1999 to 2007, was convicted in the UK courts in 2012 after pleading guilty to money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the Nigerian state and its people of £50 million. Prosecutors alleged that Ibori had stolen around $250 million during his tenure and the judge sentencing Ibori described the £50 million to which Ibori pleaded guilty as “ludicrously low.”
Ibori’s wife, sister and mistress were also convicted for money laundering. His wife and mistress were ordered to return £5.1 million and £2.6 million respectively.
Ibori had previously been convicted in the UK for theft when working for Wickes as a cashier. After forging his date of birth on his passport as a way to cover up this conviction, Ibori went on to become governor of Delta State where he earned a $25,000 salary. Despite his modest official income, Ibori enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, laundering his corrupt cash through a network of associates and family members.
Ibori’s wealth included an extensive property portfolio of six properties in London as well as further property in Washington, Houston and Johannesburg. His children attended an elite UK private school. Meanwhile Ibori owned a Jaguar and a Bentley and was in the process of buying a £20 million Bombardier private jet when he was arrested in Dubai from where he was extradited to the UK in April 2011.
Ibori returned to Nigeria in February 2017 after his release from prison. UK authorities tried unsuccessfully to detain him further while they recovered his assets.
The road to confiscating Ibori’s looted assets and returning them to Nigeria has been a long and arduous process for UK prosecutors which is still ongoing. $35 million of Ibori’s assets were first frozen by UK courts in 2007. A first confiscation hearing ended inconclusively in late 2013. A fresh confiscation trial due to begin in 2014 was stalled after Ibori and his associates sought to appeal their convictions on the basis of alleged corruption in the Metropolitan Police after Ibori’s team hired private investigators. Ibori and his associates’ defence team also alleged prosecutorial misconduct in covering up the misconduct. These allegations were given extensive coverage in the UK press.
In November 2018, the UK’s Court of Appeal rejected these appeals, finding that the allegations that officers investigating Ibori had been paid bribes were unproven, and that Ibori himself had instigated any such attempts to pay bribes. A complaint to the press regulator by the chief prosecutor about coverage of the prosecutorial misconduct in the Daily Mail was also upheld. Ibori’s application to appeal his conviction all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, was also rejected in November 2019.
In January 2020 prosecutors moved to confiscate £117 million in stolen funds from Ibori (considerably more than the £50 million he pleaded guilty to stealing) as well as £2.6 million from his mistress, Udomaka Onuigbo (although prosecutors believe she has benefited from a total of £26 million for her part in facilitating Ibori’s corruption).
In 2023 the judge overseeing Ibori’s confiscation proceedings ordered the confiscation of £101.5 million from him. These initial confiscation proceedings took an inexplicably long time to conclude, the final order was made three years after the hearings commenced in 2020. But this was not the end of the road.
In 2023, Ibori applied for permission to appeal the confiscation order on 12 grounds, which was subsequently roundly rejected by a single judge. However, he then lodged a renewed application for permission to appeal which succeeded in 2025.
A three-judge panel in the Court of Appeal found that Ibori could appeal the final sum on one ground. Ibori will argue that the judge at Southwark should not have increased the value assigned to funds which were restrained in bank accounts to reflect the change in value of money over time. The appeal is yet to be heard.
