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FG Silent as the World Probes Illegal Sale of OPL 245

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Nigerian government has curiously refused to revisit the now tainted sale of one of the country’s largest offshore oil concessions known as OPL 245 to subsidiaries of oil multinationals, Royal Dutch Shell and ENI, despite ongoing probes in the United Kingdom and Italy, according to the Leadership Newspaper.

Oil Prospecting Licence (OPL) 245 is a massive (1,958 square kilometre) and potentially highly lucrative oil block in Nigeria.

It encompasses two deepwater fields, Zabazaba and Etan, at depths of between 1,500 and 2,000 metres respectively in the offshore waters in the Gulf of Guinea.

The field is estimated to hold up to 9.23 billion barrels of crude oil, equivalent to nearly one quarter of Nigeria’s total proven reserves, according to industry figures.

According to the Leadership, proceeds from the oil well is said to be capable of servicing the country’s debt for the next 30 years.

Police in the UK and magistrates in Italy are now formally investigating the OPL 245 sale, following allegations of bribery and round tripping of sale proceeds that has trailed the deal.

London-based anti-corruption campaign group, Global Witness, has been at the forefront of an international campaign to expose the illegal dealings surrounding the OPL 245 and have sought to bring parties connected to the contentious sale and bribes to book.

Compared to the copious attention given to the OPL 245 deal by the international community, there is perceptible government aloofness from the now tainted deal in the country.

The Leadership reported that during the regime of late military dictator, Sani Abacha, the OPL 245 concession was originally awarded in 1998 by the then Nigerian oil minister, Dan Etete, to Malabu Oil and Gas, a company that he set up and owns . In effect, Etete awarded one of Nigeria’s most lucrative oil blocks to himself.

The deal effectively converted into money, an asset that had been acquired by Malabu Oil and Gas in highly suspicious, possibly illegal, circumstances.

In 2011, Shell and ENI paid $1.1 billion, plus a signature bonus of $210 million, to the Nigerian government for the concession. In a back-to-back deal negotiated by the country’s attorney-general of the federation and minister of Justice, Mr. Mohammed Adoke (SAN), the Nigerian government then undertook to transfer $1.1 billion to Etete’s company, Malabu.

Shell and ENI deny paying any money to Malabu Oil and Gas but they were aware and in agreement that the deal was for the benefit of Malabu.

Etete, who was convicted for money laundering in France, claimed in a British court in 2013 that people close to former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, demanded a slice of the oil block as bribe.

In February, the Nigerian House of Representatives called for the outright cancellation of the award of OPL 245 to all contesting parties. But, as it is with several legislative resolutions in the country, the executive ignored it.

Infact, some of those who facilitated the deal and are believed to have received parts of the bribe still work for the present administration.

Federal lawmakers directed the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to prosecute all individuals and financial institutions linked with and found culpable of receiving and transferring unlawfully with respect to the OPL 245 deal.

The recommendations were contained in the report of the Hon. Leo Ogor-led House Ad-hoc committee that investigated the OPL 245 deal.

Going further, the report directed the Nigerian Police to take over the ongoing investigation of the matter of forgery and alteration of documents indicting some directors of Malabu Oil and Gas Ltd who resigned their positions or transferred their appointment or shares without authorisation and initiate prosecution of any indicted person.

October 29, 2014, a high court in the United Kingdom lifted a secrecy order imposed on a 2013 legal challenge by a UK-based, environmental and social justice, not-for-profit organisation, The Corner House, of a decision by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) not to freeze some $215 million in alleged proceeds of crime from the OPL 245 sale.

In 2011, a middleman acting for Malabu sued the company in the United Kingdom commercial court for fees he claimed he was owed for services rendered to Malabu in the sale of OPL 245. Pending the outcome of the case, the court froze some $215 million from the proceeds of the oil concession sale.

The Corner House, together with anti-corruption watchdog, Global Witness and Re:Common, an Italian Non Government Organisation, and Dotun Oloko, a Nigerian anti-corruption campaigner, wrote to this court raising concerns that the frozen funds were proceeds of crime. The group also requested the London Metropolitan Police’s Proceeds of Corruption Unit (POCU) and the Italian authorities to investigate.

Although the police sought action under the Proceeds of Crime Act, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) declined to initiate proceedings. The Corner House therefore sought a judicial review of the CPS’s decision, arguing that the OPL 245 deal was corrupt and illegal under both Nigerian and UK law and that it was likely, on the available evidence, that a substantial part of the monies paid to Malabu had been used to pay bribes and the CPS’s failure to act was unlawful.

The application for permission to bring a judicial review of the CPS failure to act was held in secret, at the request of the CPS, because of the danger of “tipping off” those being investigated by the police.

In March 2014, the high court refused permission to bring a judicial review because the CPS had assured the court that it was still considering taking action. In July 2014, however, following the commercial court ruling in favour of the middleman, more than $110 million of the suspect funds left the UK for Switzerland.

The CPS did nothing to prevent the movement of this money. By contrast, at the request of the Italian authorities, the funds were frozen in Switzerland. Only following a mutual legal assistance request from Italy did the UK authorities freeze a further $80 million of the funds remaining in the UK.

Nicholas Hildyard of The Corner House says: “The CPS had ample opportunity to restrain the funds. It was invited, requested and challenged to do so but failed to act. The money was restrained only because of the actions of the Italian authorities. If Italy was able to get the funds frozen, what stopped the UK in the first place?”

Key figures in Italian oil multinational ENI are now under formal investigation by magistrates in Milan for alleged corruption relating to the OPL 245 deal. The corporation’s new CEO, Claudio Descalzi; his predecessor Paolo Scaroni; and its chief development, operations and technology officer, Roberto Casula, have all been named as suspects in the bribery investigation. Eni’s shares fell, wiping $1.4bn off the company’s share value on the day.

Italian prosecutors allege that $533m of the OPL 245 payment made by Shell and Eni was paid in bribes. British prosecutors acting on the request have already frozen two accounts with combined sum of N29.5 billion ($190 million) belonging to the chief intermediary, Emeka Obi, Premium Times reported.

According to a letter seeking the help of UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to freeze the assets of those involved, Italian prosecutors said some of the N83 billion ($533 million) slush money was used to buy private jets and armoured vehicles.

“We are investigating many money transfers to many people in various countries who received sums that vary from millions of dollars to thousands of dollars,” Reuters claimed the letter reads.

Jamie Beagent of law firm, Leigh Day, who acted for Corner House in the judicial review proceedings, said: “We are obviously pleased that the funds have finally been frozen and that an investigation is now taking place into this murky affair. It is only a shame that the UK authorities ducked their responsibilities in this regard and that it was left to the Italian authorities to pursue this matter with the appropriate rigour.”

The Corner House, Global Witness and Re:Common are writing to the chair of the UK parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Margaret Hodge MP, informing the committee of their concerns and requesting that the committee considers undertaking an inquiry into whether or not the existing UK legislation on restraining proceeds of crime is fit for purpose. The PAC released in March 2014, a highly critical report on confiscation orders, highlighting the CPS failure to recover assets deemed proceeds of crime.

A Home Office assessment of current legislation, undertaken by Michael Beloff QC, is widely understood to be critical of it but has refused to release Beloff’s report to The Corner House.


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EAIF Commits Additional US$30M to Support Indorama’s Expansion with Third Urea Plant in Nigeria

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The Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund (EAIF), a Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) company, has committed a US$30 million senior debt facility to Indorama, a leading producer and exporter of fertiliser.

The investment enables the construction of a new plant, port terminal, handling stations, and storage facilities in Nigeria, providing a major boost for the country’s agricultural sector, which is a crucial driver of the country and region’s economic growth.

EAIF acted as a co-lender within a broader debt financing package arranged by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), mobilising US$1.25 billion from a syndicate of impact investors, development finance solutions, and commercial banks.

EAIF’s investment increases the Fund’s lending to the company to $111 million, reflecting a joint-ambition to accelerate Indorama’s growth strategy and Nigeria’s aspirations for diversification and industrialisation.

The new funding unlocks fresh capital to enable the construction of a dedicated port terminal and state-of-the-art urea fertiliser plant, anticipating an increase in its current capacity from 2.8 million metric tons to 4.2 million metric tons per annum.

The expansion leverages the company’s strategic location as a freight-competitive supplier serving the needs of significant urea markets in the southern Atlantic, including Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, as well as West Africa, South Africa and the USA.

The facility bolsters Indorama’s capacity, extending its complex beyond the current two urea fertiliser plants, which is well poised to meet the entire demand of the Nigerian market.

The third urea plant aims to maximise output to meet the food demands of growing populations as disruptions precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine crisis affect food security around the globe.

Global crop production is reliant on the international supply of fertiliser. The landmark project is expected to position Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, as a leading producer of urea among the top 10 producers worldwide.

Contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals 8 and 9 on Decent Work and Economic Growth, and Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure, EAIF’s loan forms part of the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) objective for new infrastructure to drive action on climate and nature.

The construction of the port terminal and third plant is set to begin in 2024, with commercial operations expected to commence in 2026. During the construction phase, it is estimated that over 500 jobs will be generated, further contributing to economic development in Nigeria and beyond.

Commenting on the transaction, Olivia Carballo, Managing Director, Emerging Market, Fixed Income at Ninety One, the fund manager of the EAIF, said: “Our continued support for Indorama demonstrates EAIF’s commitment to harnessing the region’s significant economic prospects.

Africa’s potential for industrialisation is tremendous, and this landmark project is a testament to Nigeria’s enhanced ability to produce and export competitively priced, high-quality fertiliser to farmers in regional and international markets, which will remain a priority for years to come.”

Munish Jindal, CEO, Indorama, said: “Indorama will utilise state-of-the-art technology and adhere to stringent environmental standards to ensure optimal efficiency, product quality and sustainability.

We believe that the establishment of this fertiliser will position Nigeria as a key player in the global agricultural market. We are committed to maximising the potential of this project to benefit farmers, communities, and stakeholders across the value chain.

The involvement of esteemed lenders like the Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund will not only help Nigeria’s in becoming one of the largest exporter of the fertilisers in the region but will also address the issues of global food security. We extend our sincere appreciation to all our partners, lenders, and stakeholders for their unwavering support and dedication to our shared vision.”

Sérgio Pimenta, IFC Vice President for Africa, said: “Reliable access to high quality fertiliser is essential for food production and food security around the world. IFC’s investment in Indorama, along with African, Asian, European, and American partners, signals our joint commitment to support the agriculture sector, Nigeria’s economy, and the expansion of Indorama, an important supplier in the global food chain.”


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Lifi.net Achieves 500mbps Speed to Rank among Fastest Internet Providers in Nigeria

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Lifi.net, a fast-growing internet service provider, has attained internet speed that is many times faster than the documented average internet speed in Nigeria as at January 2024.

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Latest disclosure by LIfi.net shows that the company now delivers up to 500 megabits per seconds (mbps) internet speed in unlimited services provided to homes and offices. This is higher than the country’s average internet speed of 26.74mbps.

As internet subscriber base increases in Nigeria and hit 161.68 million in January, the quality of internet service provided by operators to their users still constitutes concerns as 2G network which has limited speed dominates the space by covering 57.78%.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) revealed through its latest data that while 3G is responsible for 9.36% of internet users in the country, 4G covers 31.75% of internet access and 5G internet only serves 1.11% of internet users in the country.

This combination explains why Nigeria ranked 93rd on the global mobile internet speed test out of 144 countries tested by Ookla, a U.S-based internet speed analysis firm, in January, putting the country’s median internet speed at 26.74 megabits per second (mbps).

However, Lifi.net (NT/007/22), a licensee of NCC, is among few Internet service providers (ISPs) that deliver fastest internet speed in Nigeria with up 350mbps for homes and 2500mbps for offices while assisting new ISPs with speeds over 5000mbps at the data centre and delivering the capacity to their various hubs at no extra cost.

“For over five years Lifi.net has been a leading network company, providing quality internet solutions at the speed of light and at affordable rates. We have highly technical and hard-working personnel and partners. We are very skilled at managing Cisco and Mikrotik Routers’ deployment, configurations, and integrations, fibre laying, and splicing,” says Abraham Oluwambe, Chief Operating Officer of Lifi.net.

He added that as operators attract more subscribers to their respective networks, they should equally place a premium on upgrading the quality of services to deliver broadband at the fastest internet speed possible.

“Our services are not only widespread but also affordable. We believe in making quality connectivity accessible to all. We understand the importance of budget-friendly solutions. Our cost-effective broadband plans ensure you get the best value for your investment without compromising on quality.

“While providing high-speed and reliable broadband connectivity, operators may choose the floor or the peak performance of its service. At Lifi.net, we always go for the latter,” he said.


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Our 2023 Ads Safety Report

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By Duncan Lennox, VP & GM of Ads Privacy and Safety

Billions of people around the world rely on Google products to provide relevant and trustworthy information, including ads. That’s why we have thousands of people working around the clock to safeguard the digital advertising ecosystem. Today, we are releasing our annual Ads Safety Report to share the progress we’ve made in enforcing our advertiser and publisher policies and to hold ourselves accountable in our work of maintaining a healthy ad-supported internet.

The key trend in 2023 was the impact of generative AI. This new technology introduced significant and exciting changes to the digital advertising industry, from performance optimization to image editing. Of course, generative AI also presents new challenges. We take these challenges seriously and will outline the work we are doing to address them head-on.

Just as importantly, generative AI presents a unique opportunity to improve our enforcement efforts significantly. Our teams are embracing this transformative technology, specifically Large Language Models (LLMs), so that we can better keep people safe online.

Gen AI Bolsters Enforcement 

Our safety teams have long used AI-driven machine learning systems to enforce our policies at scale. It’s how, for years, we’ve been able to detect and block billions of bad ads before a person ever sees them. But, while still highly sophisticated, these machine learning models have historically needed to be trained extensively – they often rely on hundreds of thousands, if not millions of examples of violative content.

LLMs, on the other hand, are able to rapidly review and interpret content at a high volume, while also capturing important nuances within that content. These advanced reasoning capabilities have already resulted in larger-scale and more precise enforcement decisions on some of our more complex policies. Take, for example, our policy against Unreliable Financial Claims which includes ads promoting get-rich-quick schemes. The bad actors behind these types of ads have grown more sophisticated. They  adjust their tactics and tailor ads around new financial services or products, such as investment advice or digital currencies, to scam users.

To be sure, traditional machine learning models are trained to detect these policy violations. Yet, the fast-paced and ever-changing nature of financial trends make it, at times, harder to differentiate between legitimate and fake services and quickly scale our automated enforcement systems to combat scams. LLMs are more capable of quickly recognizing new trends in financial services, identifying the patterns of bad actors who are abusing those trends and distinguishing a legitimate business from a get-rich-quick scam. This has helped our teams become even more nimble in confronting emerging threats of all kinds.

We’ve only just begun to leverage the power of LLMs for ads safety. Gemini, launched publicly last year, is Google’s most capable AI modeI. We’re excited to have started bringing its sophisticated reasoning capabilities into our ads safety and enforcement efforts.

Our Work to Prevent Fraud and Scams

In 2023, scams and fraud across all online platforms were on the rise. Bad actors are constantly evolving their tactics to manipulate digital advertising in order to scam people and legitimate businesses alike. To counter these ever-shifting threats, we quickly updated policies, deployed rapid-response enforcement teams and sharpened our detection techniques.

  • In November, we launched our Limited Ads Serving policy, which is designed to protect users by limiting the reach of advertisers with whom we are less familiar. Under this policy, we’ve implemented a “get-to-know-you” period for advertisers who don’t yet have an established track record of good behavior, during which impressions for their ads might be limited in certain circumstances–for example, when there is an unclear relationship between the advertiser and a brand they are referencing. Ultimately, Limited Ads Serving, which is still in its early stages, will help ensure well-intentioned advertisers are able to build up trust with users, while limiting the reach of bad actors and reducing the risk of scams and misleading ads.

  • A critical part of protecting people from online harm hinges on our ability to respond to new abuse trends quickly. Toward the end of 2023 and into 2024, we faced a targeted campaign of ads featuring the likeness of public figures to scam users, often through the use of deepfakes. When we detected this threat, we created a dedicated team to respond immediately. We pinpointed patterns in the bad actors’ behavior, trained our automated enforcement models to detect similar ads and began removing them at scale. We also updated our misrepresentation policy to better enable us to rapidly suspend the accounts of bad actors.

Overall, we blocked or removed 206.5 million advertisements for violating our misrepresentation policy, which includes many scam tactics and 273.4 million advertisements for violating our financial services policy. We also blocked or removed over 1 billion advertisements for violating our policy against abusing the ad network, which includes promoting malware.

The fight against scam ads is an ongoing effort, as we see bad actors operating with more sophistication, at a greater scale, using new tactics such as deepfakes to deceive people. We’ll continue to dedicate extensive resources, making significant investments in detection technology and partnering with organizations like the Global Anti-Scam Alliance and Stop Scams UK to facilitate information sharing and protect consumers worldwide.

Investing in Election Integrity

Political ads are an important part of democratic elections. Candidates and parties use ads to raise awareness, share information and engage potential voters. In a year with several major elections around the world, we want to make sure voters continue to trust the election ads they may see on our platforms. That’s why we have long-standing identity verification and transparency requirements for election advertisers, as well as restrictions on how these advertisers can target their election ads. All election ads must also include a “paid for by” disclosure and are compiled in our publicly available transparency report. In 2023, we verified more than 5,000 new election advertisers and removed more than 7.3M election ads that came from advertisers who did not complete verification.

Last year, we were the first tech company to launch a new disclosure requirement for election ads containing synthetic content. As more advertisers leverage the power and opportunity of AI, we want to make sure we continue to provide people with the greater transparency and the information they need to make informed decisions.

Additionally, we’ve continued to enforce our policies against ads that promote demonstrably false election claims that could undermine trust or participation in democratic processes.

Overall 2023 Numbers

Our goal is to catch bad ads and suspend fraudulent accounts before they make it onto our platforms or remove them immediately once detected. AI is improving our enforcement on all these fronts. In 2023, we blocked or removed over 5.5 billion ads, slightly up from the prior year, and 12.7 million advertiser accounts, nearly double from the previous year. Similarly, we work to protect advertisers and people by removing our ads from publisher pages and sites that violate our policies, such as sexually explicit content or dangerous products. In 2023, we blocked or restricted ads from serving on more than 2.1 billion publisher pages, up slightly from 2022. We are also getting better at tackling pervasive or egregious violations. We took broader site-level enforcement action on more than 395,000 publisher sites, up markedly from 2022.

To put the impact of AI on this work into perspective: last year more than 90% of our publisher page level enforcement started with the use of machine learning models, including our latest LLMs. Of course, any advertiser or publisher can still appeal an enforcement action if they think we got it wrong. Our teams will review it and, in the cases where we find errors, use it to improve our systems.

Staying Nimble and Looking Ahead

When it comes to ads safety, a lot can change over the course of a year: the introduction of new technology such as generative AI to novel abuse trends and global conflicts. And the digital advertising space has to be nimble and ready to react. That’s why we are continuously developing new policies, strengthening our enforcement systems, deepening cross-industry collaboration and offering more control to people, publishers and advertisers.

In 2023, for example, we launched the Ads Transparency Center, a searchable hub of all ads from verified advertisers, which helps people quickly and easily learn more about the ads they see on Search, YouTube and Display. We also updated our suitability controls to make it simpler and quicker for advertisers to exclude topics that they wish to avoid across YouTube and Display inventory. Overall, we made 31 updates to our Ads and Publisher policies.

Though we don’t yet know what the rest of 2024 has in store for us, we are confident that our investments in policy, detection and enforcement will prepare us for any challenges ahead.


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