So businessmen like Allen Onyema that had access collected dollars from CBN at the official rate only to repatriate the money back to Nigeria and then resell at the black market rate, which was double of the money spent to buy the dollar.
So you buy a dollar at 200 to $ and then resell it at 400 to $1 without breaking a sweat.
So this is what Allen Onyema allegedly did; he founded a fake aviation company in the US called Springfield and deceived CBN that this Sprigfield company in Georgia wants to sell 5 Boeing aircraft to him, and he needs $20 million at the official rate so he could purchase these aircraft for Air Peace.
CBN gave him the $20 million he asked for by sending the money to the US account number of Springfield.
Allen then got the Springfield director, whom he appointed and paid $20,000 for her role in the business, to transfer the money to his account number, only to launder the money by sending it back to Nigeria and then resell the dollar gotten from CBN at premium, at double the price at the black market.
A very cool business at that time that was highly lucrative, imagine investing 1 billion to get a profit of 1 billion naira tax free without breaking a sweat.
Because of how lucrative the business of round tripping was, highly connected businessmen at that time did the business of dollar round tripping under Buhari only that Allen Onyema was unlucky to be the scape goat.
Even though Allen Onyema was trying to be street smart by doing what he did, moving money around like that and using it for another purpose different from the reason CBN gave it to you is called money laundering in the US and a very big offence in that country.
So in a nutshell, Allen Onyema and his staff committed the offence of money laundering, and this case has been on since 2019.
Seeing that the US government is looking for him and his bank account in the US, which has millions of dollars, was frozen, Allen and his staff committed another offence called obstruction of justice, which is what we would discuss in Part 3.
Part 3
But in a desperate attempt to keep the funds and outsmart the U.S. law enforcement, Mr. Onyema connived with Mrs. Eghagha to create a fraudulent contract, “Aircraft Sales and Management Agreement between Springfield Aviation and Air Peace,” in May 2019. They backdated the contract to 2016 to make it seem like the contract existed before the first aircraft purchase.
In May 2019, upon discovering that he was under investigation in the Northern District of Georgia for bank fraud, Onyema and Eghagha allegedly directed the Springfield Aviation manager to sign a key business contract but also specifically told her to not date the document.
In October 2019, Onyema allegedly caused his attorneys to present that same contract, now falsely dated as being signed on May 5, 2016 (prior to the bank fraud that began in 2016), to the government in an effort to stop the investigation and unfreeze his bank accounts.
Mr. Onyema and his staff, Mrs. Eghagha, then gave the fraudulent contract to their lawyer, who, in turn, submitted it to the U.S. Attorney’s office, where he explained that his client’s actions were not criminal to warrant a forfeiture of assets.
The act of falsifying documents to prevent forfeiture of the seized funds, according to the grand jury, was deemed a conspiracy to obstruct justice and obstruction of justice.
In essence, Allen and his staff presented a fake document to the US government in order to cover their tracks, which is another entirely new offence.
Investigators found that Mrs. Eghagha sent a mail to Ms. Mayfield to sign the management agreement with a strict instruction stating “do not date.”
“Kindly help, print, and sign the attached document,” Mrs. Eghagha wrote in the mail on May 16, 2019, coping with Mr. Onyema. “Do not date, please.”
“Once you have signed, kindly scan back to me. Let me know via WhatsApp if you have any questions,” she added in the mail.
Ms. Mayfield did as instructed and resent the scanned contract to Mrs. Eghagha on May 17, 2019.
Mr. Onyema “caused his attorney J.H. to send” the fraudulent contract to the U.S. Attorney’s office “with the hopes of resolving the government’s concern and bringing the matter to a close.” The Air Peace CEO had intended for the contract to free him of any pending forfeiture proceeding.
The phrase “caused his attorney J.H.” suggests that Mr. Onyema’s lawyer may have testified against his client that he was not complicit in submitting forged documents to free his client’s assets.
It is illegal for a lawyer and his client to knowingly commit fraud, as doing so would nullify attorney-client privilege, thereby activating the crime fraud exception.
The fresh set of charges of obstructing justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice has resurrected what would have otherwise been a cold case of money-laundering against the Air Peace boss.
So in a nutshell
Allen Onyema’s alleged offences are categorised into 3.
1) Money laundering.
2) Falsifying documents in order to obstruct justice
3) Forgery.
That Allen Onyema was a victim of this schoolboy error as a businessman is simply because Air Peace did not have a corporate structure and a robust board of directors in place before the first case of the money laundering case happened in 2016.
Because if they do, the board won’t have authorised Allen Onyema to engage in money laundering in order to make a quick profit. No board worth its salt would allow the CEO to engage in that kind of unethical business transaction.
They could not have authorised him to present false documents in 2019 after he was caught by the US authorities with his hands in the jar.
Apparently, Allen Onyema is the Alpha and Omega of Air Peace, and he is paying the price for this in a big way, as he is learning through the hard way that you don’t run a business as big as Air Peace, the way a trader in the Alaba international market runs his mom and pop shop.
A big lesson for my generation of entrepreneurs: structure your business.
Put proper structure in place. Incorporate sound corporate governance for your business once your revenue crosses $1 million annually.
It is for a reason, and one of them is to avoid the humiliation of seeing your pictures all over the internet as Allen Onyema is currently going through.
Despite owning an airline that flies international routes, Mr. Onyema cannot risk travelling to the U.S. and likely other nations deemed America’s allies for fear of being arrested and extradited, as was the case with Internet fraudsters Hushpuppi and Woodberry.
Air Peace is the poster boy of the Nigerian airline business, so this embarrassing story is very bad, and the optics are not good on Air Peace no matter the lens you look at it.
By Chukwudi Iwuchukwu
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