Ibori's £89m Assets: Confiscation Trial Begins Today

The long awaited aborted confiscation of assets worth £89 million hearing of former governor of Delta State, Chief James Ibori, begins today (Monday) at Southwark Crown Court, courtroom 8.

Billed to last for six weeks, both the Crown prosecutors and Ibori’s defence team, have this final chance to prove to Judge Anthony Pitts, whether the former Delta State governor unlawfully acquired these benefits by dipping his hands into the coffers of the oil rich state during his eight-year tenure or that he acquired them through lawful means.

But it is not just the legal teams who have everything to prove during the following six weeks, the judge himself, having revealed at the pre-hearing siting on March 30, that he has had to put an “important surgery on hold ” because of the case,  is equally keen to get the facts right in order to make an informed ruling.

The hearing, which began on September 16, 2013, had been aborted twice, particularly due to the insistence of Ibori’s defence led by Ivan Krolick that the Crown must prove that the assets they want to rip off the hands of his client came directly from the funds of Delta State.

While the Crown had argued last year that Ibori had no money before he assumed the position of Governor in 1999, and as such, associating his wealth to the post, and his guilty plea before Pitts, Krolick, who took the brief after Ibori had been jailed, would have none of the basis for which the Crown wanted to conduct the confiscation.

In September of last year, he told the court, “he – Ibori – threw down a gauntlet and it may well be that it was he who is calling the bluff of the prosecution.”

Pitts himself admitted then that “it is a challenge to try and prove their – prosecution – case which they hadn’t done when he pleaded guilty.”

Krolick (perhaps the reason he took the brief) seeing that the onus is on the Crown prosecutors, insisted that he wouldn’t have it any other way. He told the court then: “If they can’t show that the funds came from Delta State, then they should stop saying so.”

One year after, the Crown now has the chance to make connections between the assets of the former governor and the accounts of the state he ruled for eight years.

Of course, they seem set to take the defence down the deep as they have refused to give direction as to which of the 66,000 page trial evidence they will be relying on in the forthcoming six weeks.  The judge himself will surely want a closure on this case before his surgery. Obviously, the gloves are surely off.