{"id":6135,"date":"2015-09-16T07:19:21","date_gmt":"2015-09-16T07:19:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=6135"},"modified":"2015-09-16T07:19:21","modified_gmt":"2015-09-16T07:19:21","slug":"iboris-mistress-uk-prosecutors-renew-legal-battle-over-21m-benefits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=6135","title":{"rendered":"Ibori\u2019s Mistress, UK Prosecutors Renew Legal Battle Over \u00a321m Benefits"},"content":{"rendered":"

The bitter legal tussle over the recalculation of the actual amount of accrued benefits between crown prosecutors and the defence team of Udoamaka Onuigbo, mistress of former Delta State governor, Chief James Ibori, will resume with a pre-hearing at the Southwark Crown Court on Thursday.
\nUdoamaka , who\u2019s currently in Nigeria, after serving her jail term in Her Majesty\u2019s prison, was convicted on the premise that she benefitted to the tune of \u00a321 million as a result of being one of the conduits through which Ibori siphoned looted funds from the oil rich state.
\nBut she took her case to the Court of Appeal, where it was ruled that the benefits that accrued to her were overstated, and therefore must be recalculated.
\nAlthough the full hearing to determine the exact amount of benefits is to begin on December 7, the reason for Thursday\u2019s sitting is to ensure that the case does not suffer any delays as it did in April. It is to also know whether Onuigo\u2019s request to be present at the hearing in December has been properly addressed and sorted. In April, the atmosphere was highly charged and both sides of the bench fired insults at each other a day after Ibori\u2019s confiscation of assets hearing was postponed.
\nThat day, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and Udoamaka\u2019s counsel called each other names inside courtroom 8, before judge Anthony Pitts adjourned hearing till December.
\nIt all started when the lead Crown prosecutor described the case as \u201ceasy , simple and easily digestible,\u201d and \u201cridiculous\u201d for the other side not to be ready to proceed if given 10 days or a little more. The defence later referred to her behaviour as \u201caggressive,\u201d after both sides terminated a meeting which was to resolve their differences.
\nTempers gradually rose as the Crown prosecutor, Sasha Wass, made a case for the hearing to begin the following week, while Mr. Feder for Onuigbo, reiterated their position that his client wanted to be present in court.
\nWass drew the first blood when she told the court that not only is Onuigbo\u2019s part in the Ibori case narrow, besides, her case is not live like those of Ibori and Brandresh Gohil, adding that Onuigbo didn\u2019t need to be physically present in Court as arrangements had been made for her to give her evidence through video link at the DFID\u2019s ( Department for International Development) office in Abuja the following Monday.
\nOn his part, Feder insisted on fighting his client\u2019s corner and following her wishes to the letter. Leaning heavily on the Court of Appeal\u2019s ruling that ordered Southwark Crown Court to reassess her \u201crealisable benefits\u201d and the other strand of the upper court\u2019s ruling that Judge Hardy got it wrong a few years ago when he ruled that Onuigbo had benefits to the tune of \u00a321m, he argued that with almost 50 years experience on the bench, he knew that going through the hearing bundle of about 13,000 pages to prepare his case was not going to be easy as the Crown prosecutor was making it. Also, he argued that he could not prepare a good defence within a couple of days and much less, going against the wish of his client. He also argued that a particular document which the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission , EFCC raided in the business address of Onuigbo was very crucial to her defence and they needed the Crown to make it available.
\nBut Wass insisted: \u201cWe cannot see her case taking more than three days. What we invite your honour to say is that the matter can proceed. There is no reason that Mrs Onuigbo\u2019s hearing should be attached to Mr Ibori and Gohil.\u201d
\nShe equally urged the judge to order the case to proceed and use part of the six weeks initially reserved for the entire Ibori hearing. Wass told the court further that adjourning the case would be a waste of public money.
\nHowever, Feder continually sang a different and opposing tune. \u201cThe idea of video link in Abuja doesn\u2019t excite us.\u201d He added that not only should the \u201cwhole issue of benefits\u201d be dealt with \u201cthoroughly,\u201d he went further to give the reasons. \u201cBenefits as an English word and benefits in confiscation are two different things.\u201d Even though Pitts initially reasoned along with Wass, saying that \u201cit doesn\u2019t seem to me it must be joined with the other two next year, \u201d and that \u201d it is something we can do much more before,\u201d Feder didn\u2019t shift ground. He told the judge, \u201cI hear what your honour says, but the idea of doing it via video link,\u201d just doesn\u2019t excite us by any stretch not the imagination.
\nIt was then that the judge thought there could be a sort of compromise, so he rose shortly and asked both sides to discuss, particularly with the Crown offering to direct the defence to the relevant and \u201cnarrow \u201d side of the entire evidence bundle.
\nHowever, the meeting didn\u2019t last for up to 30 minutes, as the solicitors tore at each other. Feder told the judge afterwards, \u201cthe meeting wasn\u2019t very fruitful. I have experienced an aggressive attitude from my learned friend, who said I\u2019m not a proper barrister and based on that, I closed the matter.\u201d
\nHe described what Wass said as \u201cnonsensical.\u201d
\nHaving also heard from Wass, Pitts concluded: \u201d I need to adjourn this case and list it on December 7,..\u201d in order \u201d to allow the defence to familiarise themselves or withdraw.\u201d
\nOn that day in April, all sides agreed that a pre-hearing in September was necessary, so as to know and prevent any barriers to the December hearing.<\/p>\n

Daily Times\"Ibori\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The bitter legal tussle over the recalculation of the actual amount of accrued benefits between crown prosecutors and the defence team of Udoamaka Onuigbo, mistress of former Delta State governor, Chief James Ibori, will resume with a pre-hearing at the Southwark Crown Court on Thursday. Udoamaka , who\u2019s currently in Nigeria, after serving her jail […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5591,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[770,772,61,410,771,769],"class_list":["post-6135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-state","tag-brandresh-gohil","tag-department-for-international-development","tag-efcc","tag-james-ibori","tag-sasha-wass","tag-udoamaka-onuigbo"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Ibori.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4oswh-1AX","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6135"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6136,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6135\/revisions\/6136"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}