-how he annexed Tin Can Island Port
-how he hosted Tinubu in Paris July
-how he purchased diplomatic passport from notorious tax haven
By Jude Kwayidagami
When he set up his first company in Nigeria during the military era, state capture was the obvious business plan of Lebanese business mogul, Gilbert Ramez Chagoury. He walked the labyrinth of Nigeria’s power corridor through successive military regimes, striking gold under the late military strongman, General Sani Abacha, to whom he was a personal economic advisor.
Dizzying accounts of mind-boggling looting, including using trucks to transport foreign currencies out of the vaults of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), were some of the improbable tales that turned out to be true following the sudden death of General Abacha.
Two years after the death of Abacha, a court in Switzerland convicted Chagoury for his involvement in what was globally seen as epic treasury looting and money laundering. The Lebanese agreed to pay a $600,000 fine and return $66 million to the Nigerian government. He received hostilities from the President Olusegun Obasanjo government culminating in a 2004 sting operation by Nuhu Ribadu, Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to arrest him and seize his private jet as Chagoury attempted a secret entry into Nigeria – a country he had been forced to flee in the wake of Abacha’s death.
Ribadu would with regrets tell a foreign interviewer how Chagoury slipped through his fingers apparently on a tip-off. The private jet wasted no time in taking off as soon as it had landed. Ribadu described Chagoury as the lynchpin in the corruption that smeared the Abacha’s regime.
Though the Lebanese billionaire went to live far away from Nigeria, he was never really far away from his corporate centre of gravity. With a legion of political and business stooges, cronies and proxies working for him, he is able to conduct his affairs largely out of public glare while making several dress rehearsals to once again get his grip on the Nigerian presidency.
What is state capture?
Wikipedia describes state capture as “a type of systemic political corruption in which private interests significantly influence a state’s decision-making processes to their own advantage.” Many businesses in Nigeria have thrived on this principle. Gilbert Chagoury however; elevated it to an art. He aims high, targeting resource-rich or vulnerable third-world countries, and then finds a way of attaching a puppet string to the neck of that country’s president.
Not only did he give business advice to General Sani Abacha, Chagoury gave advice too to the then president of Benin Republic, Mathieu Kérékou – a military ruler turned politician – who ruled his country for a total of 29 years. During the Kérékou era, the Beninese economy was dominated by Lebanese businessmen who controlled the import trade from textiles to second-hand automobiles, grains to toothpaste. For his service to the President, Kérékou awarded Chagoury with a national honour – the Ordre National du Benin with the rank of Commander. Kérékou’s successor Boni Yayi in 2006 told Gilbert Chagoury to also advice him. The Lebanese also exported his service to yet another African country; this time Chad and its President Idriss Deby who in 2005 bestowed on the businessman a national honour – the Ordre National du Tchad with the rank of Commander.
Not amused in Nigeria, all that President Olusegun Obasanjo wanted to do at this time was to arrest Chagoury who cleverly avoided Nigeria like a plague. Nuhu Ribadu believed that it was powerful businessmen like Chagoury that forced his removal from the EFCC after Obasanjo’s exit. Chagoury wooed and ensnared Presidents Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan. He almost made it completely out of hibernation under Jonathan but ran into troubled waters again by funding Jonathan’s re-election campaigns in 2014 against the winner President Muhammadu Buhari. He returned to hibernation for backing the wrong horse but recently began to stage a comeback hosting in Paris last July, the presidential candidate of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
The Chagoury business empire
Gilbert Chagoury may be ensconced in his luxury home on Rue d’lena, a few meters away from the Élysée Palace, the official residence of the French President, but his shadow looms large in many political and boardroom meetings in Nigeria. Between him and his younger brother Ronald Chagoury, is the conglomerate, the Chagoury Group which owns close to a hundred businesses spanning construction, hospitality, energy, healthcare, industry, telecommunications, real estate and entertainment.
The Chagoury owns C&C Construction Company Limited, ITB Construction, South Energyx Nigeria Limited, Hitech Construction, Shoreline Protection, Eko Atlantic City Project which they won without tender and will own for 78 years.
Others are Eko Hotel and Suites Lagos, Hotel Presidential Port Harcourt, Courdeau Catering, Convention Centre, Ideal Flour Mills Kaduna, Niger Delta Flour Mills, Grands Moulins Du Benin and Nigerian Eagle Flour Mills whose products include Semolina; popularly called Semo.
Yet others are Silhouette Furniture, Fleetwood Transportation, Glassforce, Ragolis Waters, Hyperia Internet, CKD Industries and Ideal Eagle Hospital which caters mostly to expatriate workers, including those of Royal Dutch Shell.
The Chagoury has a huge stake in Tin Can Island which was built by C&C Construction, an arm of the Chagoury Group, to service the growing demands of its flour mills. The Chagoury Group’s Tin Can Island Grain Receiving Facility and associated Storage Silos is one of the principal gateways for commodities arriving in Nigeria and services wheat deliveries to both Ideal Flour Mills in Kaduna and Nigerian Eagle Flour Mills in Ibadan.
From the port, the grain is transported by Fleetwood Transportation, another Chagoury Group company that operates like the Dangote Truck. The terminal handles wheat, maize and malt used for the brewing process. Industry watchers say that Tin Can practically belongs to the Chagoury family.
Some of the big contracts given to the Chagoury Group in Nigeria include the State Security Headquarters the State Security Headquarters Building in Abuja, Nigeria; he Nigerian Defence Academy; Ocean Parade Towers, a luxury residential development on Banana Island Lagos; the National Assembly Complex in Abuja; 800 units staff housing complex for ALSCON’s Aluminium Smelter Plant; a housing, school and leisure complex for Elf Petroleum Nigeria Limited; a foreshore development project on Osborne Road Ikoyi; a 13-floor residential development project on Victoria Island; 19-floor Intercontinental Hotel on Victoria Island; a new headquarter for Magnum Trust Bank; and the new headquarters and office complex for TOTAL oil company in Port Harcourt.
Other clients are the Federal Ministry of Works; Abia State Government, the Nigerian Breweries; Bayelsa State Government and the Lagos State government.
The Tinubu factor
BUSINESS LEAKS gathered that Gilbert Chagoury began to court Tinubu from his early days as governor of Lagos State. It is said that both men share a lot in common in terms of big ambition, temperament, power and money. Chagoury’s companies were awarded contracts for the construction of the Lekki-Epe road, the Murtala- Mohammed International Airport road and the Eko Atlantic City mega project. It was also Tinubu that got governors of his then Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) to award contracts to Chagouri’s subsidiaries in states like Ekiti, Osun and Edo.
When Chagoury’s younger brother Ronald got married in 2007, Tinubu flew to Monaco for the wedding. The Chagoury returned the favour when Tinubu’s son Seyi had his own wedding. Seyi and Ronald Chagouri are close business partners. Both men are on the board of the multi-billion Loatsad Promomedia Communications Consultancy.
In July this year when Tinubu had to visit Paris for undisclosed reasons, it was Chagoury that helped organized his trip. When General Abacha was struggling with ill-health, Chagoury had flown foreign doctors and equipment to Aso Rock.
Besides Tinubu’s rumoured medical trip to Paris, it is believed that Chagouri used the occasion to sell Tinubu’s candidacy to the French. For years Chagoury had facilitated oil business deals in Nigeria for the French oil company TotalEnergies. Most notable among them is the lucrative deepwater Akpo gas field, OML 130.
BUSINESS LEAKS gathered that even though Gilbert Chagoury broke the bank for Jonathan’s campaign, he also gave donations to the APC leading to Tinubu arranging a meeting between Chagoury and Buhari before the election. When Buhari won, Tinubu arranged a second meeting where Chagoury met Buhari as president-elect but met a different man who gave him the cold shoulder.
It was further gathered that Chagoury’s sole purpose was to secure an assurance that the EFCC would not look into his business dealings under Goodluck Jonathan. Fearing the worst after the second meeting, he left never to return.
Earlier in 2010, the multi-billionaire was pulled off his private jet in New Jersey, USA and detained for several hours after FBI agents discovered his name on a recently updated no-fly list.
It was such fear of the unknown that made Gilbert Chagoury pay a little fortune to acquire a diplomatic passport with the attendant immunity from the Caribbean Island of St Lucia which happened to be a notorious tax haven. He was St. Lucia’s ambassador to UNESCO and the Vatican until 2017.
Source: Business Leaks
