Ellias Preko, a Ghanaian and former Goldman Sachs banker, who helped James Ibori, a former governor of Delta launder a fortune in offshore accounts ha
Ellias Preko, a Ghanaian and former Goldman Sachs banker, who helped James Ibori, a former governor of Delta launder a fortune in offshore accounts has been ordered by a UK court to pay back £7.3m(N3.2 billion) to the British treasury or face 10 years more in jail. Ghanaian Ellias Preko, Ibori’s money launderer fined N3.2billion by UK court
The order was slammed on Preko on Monday by Judge David Tomlison, following a confiscation hearing. Preko has three months to repay the money or he will return to jail. He was jailed for four and a half years back in 2013 for his role in the scheme.
According to Daily Mail Online, Preko, a Harvard graduate, who is now 60 years old was believed to have abused his ‘gold-plated credentials’ to launder at least £3m plundered by Ibori, from Delta state treasury. Ibori, who governed Delta between 1999 and 2007 was estimated to have pocketed up to £160 million from government treasuries, depriving the state’s poor of the cash.
Preko, who represented himself, told the court in a previous hearing that much of the cash had been spent on election campaigning back in his native Ghana. He said he had run as candidate for the centre-right NPP party back in the mid-2000s. Preko explained that Ghana is predominantly a cash-based society and that few receipts exist for his campaign spending.
From the court records, it appeared that Preko had also been close to a former governor of Kogi, late Prince Abubakar Audu, who he claimed took interest in him because he was also a former banker.
Ibori, now 60, used the laundered money to buy a fleet of luxury motors and blew millions on property in Britain, South Africa and Houston, Texas. He was in the process of negotiating a purchase on a £12.5m private jet when Scotland Yard detectives caught up with him. At his trial, he admitted seven counts of fraud and money laundering. Preko, his siphoning-in-chief, of St Johns Wood Road, St Johns Wood, northwest London, denied charges but was convicted of money laundering.
