Sunday Express
October 29, 2000
Woman with key to a Pounds4 billion fraud
Exclusive BY Yvonne Ridley
THIS ordinary looking woman walking down a London Street barely rates a second
glance- but she could help to solve one of the world's biggest financial
scandals.
Banker Patricia Cousins, 62, handles at least one account which is suspected
of being used in a multi-billion-pound fraud which could bring down the
Nigerian government and plunge the country in economic chaos.
Miss Cousins is just one of the many people in the London financial world who
will be quizzed by the Financial Services Authority about their possible
links to a labyrinth of foreign bank accounts and off-shore trusts in which
the late Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha stashed Pounds4billion of state
funds.
The FSA wants to know what steps, if any, the London banks took to identify
the source of the vast funds they were asked to handle. Part of the
investigation focuses on the role played by the Discount Bank And Trust in
Grosvenor Square, London, where Miss Cousins is based, and its head office in
Geneva, Switzerland.
Among the account transactions Miss Cousins handled is one for the Karosa
Foundation, which is suspected by the Nigerians of harbouring up to Pds 80
million of looted funds taken from the Central Bank of Nigeria.
According to the documentation shown to the Sunday Express, the Karosa
Foundation account is alleged to have played a vital role in the fraud and
has been temporarily frozen.
American banker Robert Minton has been identified as the alleged financial
architect behind the complex investment programme. He opened the Karosa
Foundation account and always dealt directly with Miss Cousins when he was in
London.
When the Sunday Express contacted Patricia Cousins about the allegations she
replied, "Do you know who I am? I am going to report this to someone else."
She declined to comment further. However a man calling himself Luther Silver
returned our call from Discount Bank And Trust and said: "We want to know
what documents you have. You are on very dangerous ground."
The financial genius behind the entire fraud has been identified as Abdulkadir
Ahmed, governor of Nigeria's Central Bank.
He presided over a complex scam in which Nigeria's debt was "bought back"
illegally by means of banking his country's stolen cash in foreign financial
institutions.
Nigeria's President, Olusegun Obasanjo, has personally pleaded with Clare
Short, the Secretary of State for International Development to help him
retrieve his country's missing billions.
The Serious Fraud Office is contemplating launching its own probe into the
affair which is also being investigated by the CIA.
A spokesperson for the Nigerian government said: "Our credibility is at stake
with our own people, the entire world. Nigeria has plenty to steal and no
shortage of people to steal it."
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