JAMES ONANEFE IBORI APPEALS AGAINST LONDON COURT CONVICTION

Fomer Delta State Governor, James Onanefe Ibori, has filed an appeal in the British Court of Appeal against his 2012 convic­tion.

In a statement issued on Sunday by his Me­dia Assistant, Mr. Tony Eluemunor, Ibori said his counsel informed the Southwark London Court on Friday that they have filed the appeal on Ibori’s behalf. As a re­sult, the court then in­definitely adjourned the on-going proceedings concerning the second confiscation hearing. The original three- week confiscation hearing be­fore Judge Pitts in Sep­tember 2013 was unable to make any finding of theft from Delta State.

The British Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has, since Febru­ary 2016, been under­taking a mammoth dis­closure exercise and so far substantial material evidencing the police corruption and miscon­duct has been disclosed. The CPS has gagged the media from reporting on this.

David Rose of the London Mail and Sun­day newspaper as well as other reporters have made applications in open court for the re­lease of this material. Mr. Rose, for instance, argued it is in the public interest to do so, as Ibori and linked-cases are said to have been corrupted by Metropolitan Police corruption, prosecution misconduct and sig­nificant non-disclosure of key material which undermines the convic­tions.

For instance, a BBC report of July 2, 2016, titled: ‘Ibori lawyer awarded £20,000 by Crown Prosecution Ser­vice’ mentioned police and prosecution’s mis­behavior as well as their massive misleading of the courts. According to the report, “The extraor­dinary payment is just the latest twist in a legal case that has led to inves­tigations into allegations of police corruption and a cover-up of key evi­dence”.

The BBC report con­tinued: “In May (2016), the CPS acknowledged that it had intelligence that supports the asser­tion that a Metropolitan Police officer was paid for information.

On Tuesday, 7 June 2016, Stephen Kam­lish, QC, represent­ing Bhadresh Gohil, submitted further cor­roboration of the seri­ous misconduct by the prosecutors in the case – Sasha Wass QC and Es­ther Shutzer-Weissman and how both knowingly conspired to pervert the course of justice by or­chestrating a cover-up of the corruption and their own past miscon­ducts. 

However, the most shocking episode concerns the willful mis­leading of the Court of Appeal in the Gohil ap­peal of 2014.