DIEZANI ALISON-MADUEKE, the former Nigerian Minister for Petroleum Resources, has been charged with Bribery in the United Kingdom. It has been alleged that she received the equivalent of millions of Pounds in bribes and kickbacks for awarding lucrative oil contracts while in her official ministerial position, and that as the result lived a life of extreme extravagance and affluence. Objectively speaking, she may has been the most corrupt of all Nigerian officials who illegally profited from Nigeria's oil boom. Her substantial assets in the UK and the United States were previously frozen by the authorities.
Madueke was at the center of one of the Caribbean's most notorious diplomatic passport sales scandals few years ago, when the Prime Minister of Dominica, ROOSEVELT SKERRIT, illegally sold her a diplomatic passport from his island nation, for a large amount of cash, which she later unsuccessfully employed in a futile effort to avoid arrest in the UK. Skerrit reportedly urgently flew to London to hand-deliver the identity document, after being asked to do so by PATRICIA SCOTLAND, the controversial Secretary-General of the Commonwealth of Nations, who was born in Dominica, though a British citizen. Publicity surrounding the matter damaged the reputation of Skerrit.
It further focused attention on Dominica's dodgy Citizenship by Investment (CBI/CIP) Program, controlled by the prime minister, and which has sold citizenship to large numbers of career transnational criminals, and Russian organized crime figures, who use dominica passports for visa-free entry to the Uk and EU Schengen Zone. The UK recently revoked Dominica's passport-free entry privileges, and it is expected that the European will follow suit, closing a legal loophole exploited for decades by white collar criminals, international sanctions evaders and corrupt PEPs.
Madueke also faces criminal charges in her native Nigeria, which has long sought her extradition.
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