EXCLUSIVE: Igho Sanomi Rushes to British Virgin Islands Court to Resurrect Lengard Projects Limited, the Company America Named in $14.95 Million Taleveras Payments to Diezani Alison-Madueke’s Ally, Kola Aluko

Secrets Reporters

$14,950,000 is the total the United States government recorded in Table 4 of its forfeiture complaint against former Petroleum Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke, in thirteen payments which the complaint alleged Taleveras companies made to Kolawole Akanni Aluko over six months in 2011 and 2012. The same complaint named Igho Charles Sanomi as founder and chairman of Taleveras and as a director and 30 percent shareholder of Lengard Projects Limited. On 1 March 2024, Sanomi filed a claim in the British Virgin Islands to restore a company of that same name, Lengard Projects Limited, to the Register of Companies.

Documents exclusively seen by SecretsReporters show the claim was filed at the High Court of Justice in the Virgin Islands, in the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, as Claim Number BVIHCV2024/0066. Sanomi is the claimant in the case and the Registrar of Corporate Affairs is the defendant. The filing is a Fixed Date Claim Form brought under Section 218 of the BVI Business Companies Act, 2004, as amended.

The form asks the court to declare the dissolution of the company void and to restore the name of Lengard Projects Limited to the Register of Companies. It asks that the company be restored as a BVI Business Company by the Registrar of Corporate Affairs upon payment of any outstanding fees and penalties under the Act. It records that the claimant shall serve a sealed copy of the order on the defendant and pays the costs to the Financial Services Commission in the sum of $1,000.

The form records that the affidavit of Igho Charles Sanomi, setting out the facts and giving full details of the claim, was filed with it, and it carries a certificate of truth in his name. His legal practitioners on the filing are Samuels Richardson and Co, of the Wattley Building in Road Town, Tortola, and the form was signed on their behalf by Ayodeji D. Bernard. The form records filing fees of 139.79 paid.

The United States complaint

The United States filed its verified forfeiture complaint on 14 July 2017 at the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, as Civil Number 4:17-cv-02166. The complaint sought the forfeiture of approximately $144 million in assets, and the matters set out in it are allegations made by the United States government upon information and belief. Alison-Madueke served as Minister for Petroleum Resources from April 2010 to May 2015, according to the complaint.

The complaint alleged that Alison-Madueke used her influence to steer Strategic Alliance Agreements to companies beneficially owned by Aluko and Olajide Omokore. The agreements at the centre of the Taleveras payments are the Forcados agreements, signed in April and May 2011 between the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company and Atlantic Energy Drilling Concepts Nigeria Limited, covering Oil Mining Leases 26, 30, 34 and 42.

At paragraph 122, the complaint alleged that Atlantic Energy Drilling Concepts Nigeria Limited and Atlantic Energy Brass Development Limited sold the oil lifting allocations assigned to them under the Forcados and Brass agreements to third party oil trading companies and used the proceeds to purchase the properties named in the forfeiture action. At paragraph 123, under the heading Taleveras Payments, the complaint stated that shortly after the award of the Forcados agreements, Aluko began to receive at his personal account at LGT Bank a stream of payments from the Taleveras Group of Companies and its affiliates, including Taleveras Trading Limited and Taleveras Petroleum Trading BV.

Table 4 of the complaint lists the payments, beginning with $1,500,000 on 12 July 2011 and ending with a final payment recorded on 10 January 2012. At paragraph 124, the complaint described Taleveras as a Nigerian based oil trading company.

At paragraph 125, the complaint stated that the founder and chairman of Taleveras is Igho Sanomi, and that Sanomi is also a director of and a 30 percent shareholder in Lengard Projects Limited, which the complaint described as a Nigerian corporation. The complaint stated that notations recorded alongside the wires that Taleveras sent to Aluko indicate the payments were made in connection with a joint venture between Lengard and Atlantic Energy Drilling Concepts Nigeria Limited concerning the Forcados agreements.

The notations printed in Table 4 include the words RFB Lengard JVA against the first payment, the words joint venture contract with Lengard Project against the payment of 20 July 2011, and the words Kolawole Aluko and Lengard Projects agreement for OML 30 34 42 26 against payments recorded in October and December 2011 and in January 2012. At paragraph 127, the complaint alleged that the sums in Table 4 were paid to Aluko in return for an assignment to Taleveras, or to Lengard, or to both, of the rights of Atlantic Energy Drilling Concepts Nigeria Limited to lift oil under the Forcados agreements. At paragraph 128, it stated that each of the transactions in Table 4 was transferred into and out of correspondent bank accounts at a financial institution which processes its dollar wire transactions through Newark, New Jersey.

The two records

The complaint of 2017 described Lengard Projects Limited as a Nigerian corporation. The claim form of 2024 concerns a company of the same name which Sanomi asked the British Virgin Islands court to restore as a BVI Business Company. Neither document states that the Nigerian corporation described in the complaint and the British Virgin Islands company named in the claim form are the same corporate person, and SecretsReporters makes no such claim in this report. The name Lengard has also been discussed in public before now, including by Transparency International UK in December 2024.

Download the full court document: here