UK banks 'help corrupt politicians move cash'

The watchdog group Global Witness blamed the banks for allowing former state governors Diepreye Alamieyeseigha and Joshua Dariye to funnel huge sums of money.

Its report called on Barclays, HSBC Holdings, NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS to exercise stricter controls and closely monitor how much money foreign political leaders deposit into their accounts.

“Our financial system is morally complicit in Nigerian corruption,” the report said.

“The government must send a clear signal to the financial sector: Corrupt money is not welcome. And the banks themselves must demonstrate much more clearly the steps they are taking to stop dirty money entering the financial system.”

HSBC said it had “rigorous and robust” measures in place to stop such abuses, but a spokesman said he could not discuss individual customers.

Both Alamieyeseigha and Dariye’s cases are examples of the culture of bribery that pervades life in Nigeria, where oil money funds nearly all government operations.

Government contracts often offer the nation’s political elite a quick means to enrich themselves while more than 80 per cent of people in Africa’s most populous nation earn around 1.25 a day.

In one case, the report shows an employee at UBS “politely” asked Alamieyeseigha about the millions of dollars coming into his account. The report said the then-governor of oil-rich Bayelsa state told the employee he expected more money to come into the account for a property sale, while he previously told the government he owned only a few hundred thousand dollars worth of land.

The employee accepted Alamieyeseigha’s answer, then tried to get him to set up an offshore trust fund.

“This shows how important it is for banks to try and independently verify the information that they receive from their clients, especially when dealing with senior (politically exposed persons) in highly corrupt environments such as Nigeria,” the report said .

Alamieyeseigha later would flee Britain for Nigeria disguised as a woman, although MPs impeached him and stripped him of his immunity from prosecution. His downfall gave rise to a little-known deputy governor Goodluck Jonathan, who now serves as Nigeria’s president.

Dariye, a former Plateau state governor, brought 2.85m into Britain through Barclays and NatWest, now owned by Royal Bank of Scotland, which itself was partially nationalised after the credit crisis.

Dariye used a housing manager to launder the money, though the banks never questioned why someone with that position deposited millions.