US Firm Questions Authenticity Of Letter Clearing Tinubu Of Arrest Records

A US lobbying firm has questioned the authenticity of a 2003 letter purportedly issued by the American Consulate in Lagos clearing President Bola Tinubu of criminal arrest records in the United States.

Von Batten-Montague-York raised the questions in a statement on Wednesday after former presidential aide Reno Omokri shared the document on X and attributed it to the US Embassy in Nigeria.

The document, dated February 4, 2003, is addressed to Tafa Balogun, who was then Inspector General of Police, and is signed by Michael H. Bonner, identified as Legal Attaché at the American Consulate in Lagos.

It states that a records check of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Crime Information Center was conducted in relation to Tinubu following an inquiry from the Nigerian Police.

The letter says the check returned no records of criminal arrests, wants or warrants for Tinubu, whose date of birth was listed as March 29, 1952.

However, Von Batten-Montague-York said the document contains several spelling and grammatical errors that raise questions about whether it is a genuine US government communication.

The firm pointed to words including “czheck” instead of “check” and “maitatins” instead of “maintains”, as well as the use of “it’s territories” instead of “its territories”.

It also highlighted the sentence, “The result of the checks were negative,” as grammatically incorrect, alongside the phrases “nor information of your department” and “contact me direct”.

“Given these errors, we find it very difficult to accept this letter as authentic without independent verification,” the firm said.

Von Batten-Montague-York further warned that if the document was fabricated and presented as an official US government communication, those responsible could face legal consequences under US law.

The firm’s statement comes amid renewed scrutiny of historical US records relating to Tinubu following the FBI’s recent disclosures in an ongoing Freedom of Information Act case.

The FBI and the US Department of Justice are currently involved in litigation over records sought by transparency activist Aaron Greenspan concerning investigations involving Tinubu.

The case relates to requests for FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration records, including documents connected to investigations from the early 1990s.

The renewed dispute has brought the 2003 letter back into public discussion, as it has previously been cited as evidence that US authorities found no criminal arrest records for Tinubu.

The letter itself is not a new document. Its contents have been publicly reported for years, including in Nigerian media reports dating back to 2003 and subsequent political discussions over allegations concerning Tinubu.

However, the latest challenge concerns the authenticity of the particular copy currently being circulated and whether it can be independently verified as an official communication from the US Consulate.

The document also bears a “Certified True Copy” stamp and references an administrative secretary and an Independent Community Relations Commission in Lagos State.

Neither the presence of the stamp nor the wording of the letter, by itself, establishes whether the document is authentic.

The US authorities have not, in the material currently available, publicly confirmed the authenticity of the copy shared by Omokri.

The FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC) is a law-enforcement database used for criminal justice information, meaning a negative NCIC result should not automatically be interpreted as a finding that a person had never been investigated, involved in civil proceedings or had no other records held by US agencies.

The dispute therefore centres on both the authenticity and scope of the 2003 document, rather than establishing that the letter definitively settles the broader questions surrounding the historical investigations involving Tinubu.