ATIKUGATE: Directors Rush To CAC To Register Company Linked To PDP Presidential Candidate

For about 10 years, a company linked to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, illegally operated as a legal entity and allegedly opened bank accounts without registering with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) — the statutory body with the responsibility to regulate the formation and management of companies in Nigeria.

On Monday, a former media aide to Atiku, Michael Achimugu, made headlines after spilling details of how his former principal allegedly used phony companies called ‘Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs)” to receive bribes and divert public funds.

Achimugu, who warned Nigerians against voting Atiku because of his alleged corrupt tendencies, shared an audio recording of alleged phone conversion between him and Atiku, in which the former president admitted that while serving as VP under the Olusegun Obasanjo administration between 1999 and 2007, he set up the SPVs to “carry out certain activities” to avoid being linked to corruption.

“What happened was when we came into office, I advised the president against open corruption. I told him to give me three people ‘you trust’ and I will prepare three companies in which they will be subscribers or rather the directors,” the PDP presidential candidate was heard saying in the tape.

One of those companies, as admitted by Atiku, was Marine Float Limited — a company previously accused of receiving N100 million out of the N1.16 billion ecological funds obtained in 2004 by the convicted former Governor of Plateau State, Joshua Dariye.

The Ecological Fund Office was domiciled in the Presidency and was being overseen by Atiku as chairman of the office at the time.

Among PDP chieftains who allegedly shared from the N1.1 billion were the then Minister of Special Duties, Yomi Edu, who received N100m, N80m was given to then Permanent Secretary of the Ecological Fund Office in the Presidency, Kingsley Nkoma; N10m to a former Deputy Senate President, Ibrahim Mantu, N6.8m to the PDP Plateau State and N66m to 274 PDP wards in the state.

However, THE WHISTLER investigation showed that although Marine Float Limited was reported to have received government contracts during the Obasanjo-Atiku administration between 1999 and 2007, the company was not registered with the CAC until Mar 13, 2017.

Our findings further revealed Salman Braimah, Martins Udoh, and Ghali Musa Danhodi as the directors and shareholders of the company.

An official of the Corporate Affairs Commission who spoke to THE WHISTLER on the condition of anonymity said it was impossible that the company was registered earlier than 2017 and must have been operating illegally before the date on CAC’s records.

“We couldn’t have registered it (Marine Float Limited) earlier than that 2017. It is not possible; you can’t see a different date. But I am 99% sure that the date you see on the CAC records was when the company was incorporated,” said the official.

“And the fact that it was registered in 2017, it means it was not when we were doing full manual registration. But as of 2017, we had started the automation (online registration),” the source added.

An Abuja-based lawyer, Nelson Ilebor Kebordih, told this medium that it was not uncommon practice for commercial banks to open “phony bank accounts” for “phony companies” before the introduction of the Bank Varication Number (BVN) by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in 2015.

He said Marine Float Limited must have been hurriedly registered “in anticipation of a possible outcome or backlash” that may affect Atiku’s 2019 presidential bid.

His words: “It is part of the lack of transparency in the corporate governance and the complicity of our financial system over the years. For people who are highly complicit in fraud, they do what they call phony companies in collaboration with the banking institution to open what they call phony accounts.

“Those accounts are packaged and they receive money. But the law is that, ordinarily, the company must first of all be registered as a corporate legal entity before it can even operate as an entity as such.

“Ordinarily, accounts are meant to be operated by either natural entities or legal entities. A natural entity is a human being while a legal entity is an entity that has the capacity of a human being but is just a creation of the law. But what happens is that, because of our very mucky system and lack of corporate governance and transparency in the corporate space over the years, you now discover that some banks have lent themselves out as agents and vehicles for the purposes of encouraging such dubious deals.

“So, it is possible, even though its not legal. That’s why we have the name ‘phony companies’ and ‘phony accounts’ in the first place. These companies don’t exist in law but the agencies or persons that are supposed to give effect to the law compromise the process and then give them a cloak of legal entity and they continue to transact and deal with them even though they are not in existence under the law as guaranteed by the extant provisions of the law. They’re not in existence but these companies (banks) give them recognition. So, some of these banks, because of the drive for inflow (deposits) and especially because of the complicity of the bank officials who want to also profit from these shady deals, they just receive these monies, package those kinds of accounts and let it pass through.

“And you also know that that is one of those things that the CBN has actually done (introduction of Bank Verification Number, BVN) to be able to checkmate those things. Then, it was possible for a non-natural or legal entity to have an account operated in its name but under the current dispensation where we now have the BVN, (it may not be possible).

“There are two levels of checks now, beyond the legal entity operating, there are human beings whose BVN must also be used to authenticate the account.

“So, what may have happened is that somebody has seen that there could be controversies around it (Marine Float Limited and decided to register it in 2017), and don’t forget that when you look Atiku, it was 2019 that Atiku made one of the major inroads in his presidential bids. He had a better and bigger platform and he knew that there was a possibility against his very ruthless opponents, so there were likely to though all routes. Remember that at that time, even his INTELS (company), they tried to interfere with them. So, in order to give a legal cloaking (to Marine Float) and to retrospectively, be it as a form of endorsement, they had people who will now take responsibility for (Marine Float). Because it is the directors of the company that are responsible. Like it happened in the case of Ibori, they may have brought some people to now say, ‘No, we are the owners of the company, assuming they even received money, we are the ones that received the money.”

“So, they must have set some people up…in anticipation of a possible outcome or backlash in 2019, so that they could have a fallback option.”

“We couldn’t have registered it (Marine Float Limited) earlier than that 2017. It is not possible; you can’t see a different date. But I am 99% sure that the date you see on the CAC records was when the company was incorporated.

“And the fact that it was registered in 2017, it means it was not when we were doing full manual registration. But as of 2017, we had started the automation (online registration).