Judge David Tomlinson has ordered the confiscation of 101.5 million pounds ($130 million) from former Delta state governor James Ibori.
Tomlinson, in London on Friday when delivering his order at Southwark Crown Court, said Ibori should pay the sum immediately or face an eight-year jail sentence.
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Ibori served half of a 13-year jail sentence after pleading guilty in 2012 to 10 counts of fraud and money-laundering.
Ibori, who is in Nigeria, said he would appeal against the confiscation order, one of the largest imposed on an individual in recent British legal history.
“The next steps will be to take my fight for justice to the highest courts in the UK,” he said in a statement.
Ibori was governor of oil-producing Delta State from 1999 to 2007 and was extradited from Dubai to Britain in 2011. He pleaded guilty in 2012 to 10 counts of fraud and money-laundering and received a 13-year jail sentence of which he served half, as is standard.
The case was hailed as a landmark in the fight against corruption in Britain, a global money-laundering hub, and in Nigeria.
The confiscation process took over a decade after Ibori’s conviction because of lengthy court delays and legal wrangling in London.
“The long and tortuous road to reach this point shows just how tough it is to recover the proceeds of corruption in the UK,” said Helen Taylor, Senior Legal Researcher at campaign group Spotlight on Corruption.
She added:
To ensure justice delayed doesn’t mean justice denied for the Nigerian people, it’s essential that the UK now makes every effort to ensure the speedy return of this stolen loot to benefit the victims of Ibori’s corruption in Delta State.
Britain has pledged to return any funds recovered from Ibori to Nigeria. In 2021, it returned 4.2 million pounds that had been confiscated from Ibori’s ex-wife and his sister, who also served jail time for helping him.