(L-R) Oscar Onyema, DG, NSE and Mr Mustapha Chikeobi, MD/CEO, Amcon at the listing of Amcon to the Nigerian Stock Exchange in Lagos, Nigeria.

Top Nigerian politicians who lost in the recently concluded elections in the country may not have the opportunity of fleeing the country after the May 29, 2011 handover date, as the United States of American embassy as well as some European countries’ (Shenghen countries particularly) embassies have refused to grant them visas to travel out of the country beyond the handover date.
Investigations show that some of the politicians who are currently in possession of diplomatic passports that would no longer be useful beyond the handover date, besieged these embassies with their green passports shortly after their re-election bid failed to renew their visas. To their surprise, however, the embassies granted visas that would not be valid beyond May 29, 2011. Top on the list was a prominent politician from Ogun State who recently lost his re-election bid in his constituency. Some of the governors who anticipated their loss in the last elections were also said to have made attempt to renew their travel documents in readiness to take off in any event of unforeseen circumstances.
This attempt to leave the country may not be unconnected with plans by the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) to swoop in on the political office holders and their officials over possible corrupt practices while in office. The EFCC is believed to be secretly working closely with the office of the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) to ensure that all corrupt public officials who lost elections are promptly identified, interrogated and effectively prosecuted to ensure full recovery of any money that is the subject of corruption and publicly declare the amount recovered.
Investigations also reveal that the EFCC and the embassies were acting on some intelligence reports that have linked some of these politicians to money laundering scam. Specifically, some banks in the United States, United Kingdom and Scotland were said to have taken millions of dollars from these politicians and have not done sufficiently enough to investigate the customers or the source of their funds. The report said the banks might not have broken the law, but had helped to fuel corruption in Nigeria.
BusinessWorld Intelligence investigations further show that what is so extraordinary about this story is that nearly all of these banks had previously fallen foul of the UK banking regulator, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in 2001 by reportedly helping the former Nigerian dictator, the late General Sani Abacha funnel nearly a billion pounds through the UK. These banks were supposed to have tightened their systems but a few years later, they were accepting corrupt Nigerian money again.
Nigeria ranks 130th in the 2009 edition of the Transparency International index of most corrupt countries. “For anyone to open a big account for Nigerians is asking for trouble, if not ‘willful blindness,’ which the courts define as ‘the deliberate avoidance of knowledge of the facts,” he said.
Investigations show that some of these foreign banks have received a cease-and-desist order from the Fed and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, requiring them “to take corrective action to improve its firm-wide compliance risk-management programme,” including its anti-money laundering compliance procedures.