With a staggering $15.4 billion wealth, Nigeria’s businessman and industrialist, Aliko Dangote, is on Forbes Rich List as the richest man in Africa.

But does Mr. Dangote pay his fair share of tax in Nigeria or is he hiding assets abroad? That remains unclear.

Yet that question has become even more relevant across the globe following discoveries of several secret shell companies linked to the businessman, his allies and relatives.

According to internal data of the Panama-based offshore-provider, Mossack Fonseca, obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) with PREMIUM TIMES and over 100 other media partners in 82 countries, Mr. Dangote, his relative, Sayyu Dantata, as well as his business allies have over the years used shell companies domiciled in controversial tax havens in their business transactions.

The unprecedented year-long investigation involving 11.5 million secret documents – which stretch from 1977 to December 2015 – expose the hidden underground of the world economy, a network of banks, law firms and other middlemen that utilize shell companies, sometimes using them to hide illegal wealth.

The 2.6 TB files, involving 214,488 entities, also reveal hundreds of details about how former gun-runners, contractors and other members of the spy world use offshore companies for personal and private gain.

The investigation unveiled the cloak of secrecy provided by Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that specializes in creating offshore companies, some of which have been used by con men and women to hide Ponzi schemes, predatory lending scams, and other financial frauds from their victims and from the authorities.

Mossack Fonseca has, however, in a statement to ICIJ denied wrongdoings, saying, as a registered agent, it merely helps incorporate companies, and that before agreeing to work with a client in any way, it conducts a thorough due-diligence process, “one that in every case meets and quite often exceeds all relevant local rules, regulations and standards to which we and others are bound.”

Mr. Dangote is one of the most prominent clients of Mossack Fonseca, and in Panama alone, based on company registration addresses provided by shareholders, 13 shell companies registered by the firm are directly linked to persons and companies who in turn are linked to the billionaire and his allies.

Mr. Dangote, alongside his half brother, Sayyu Dantata, the founder of MRS Holdings (a leading West African oil-marketing firm, which acquired Chevron-Texaco’s downstream assets in 2007) bought equal shares of 12,500 each from OVLAS S.A, a shell company registered in Seycheles, on October 6, 2003.

Seychelles is a well-known tax haven used by businessmen and politicians and celebrities to perpetrate shady business deals. On the same date also, a company they both own as at 2003, MRS Oil and Gas Co. Limited bought 25,000 numbers of shares from OVLAS S.A.

According to the documents, three years after they existed as shareholders of the company, the trio – Dangote, Dantata and M.R.S Oil and Gas Company Limited – ceased to be shareholder in the company. That was on April 12, 2006.

But in an arrangement that seems curious, Mr. Dangote was issued a higher amount of shares – 250,000 – on the same day he resigned.

In the same manner, his brother, Mr. Dantata, was issued the same amount of 250,000 shares. That means the businessmen simply resold the shares back to themselves. Their company, MRS Oil and Gas, was re-issued 500,000 shares.

In what appears a plot to blur the trace to the Ovlas in Seychelles, the shareholders quickly filed for a change of name to Petrowest S.A.

A document seen by PREMIUM TIMES, reads “Republic of Seychelles, INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS COMPANIES ACT, 1994…Company No: 018606…

This is to certify that OVLAS SA. has changed its name and is now incorporated under the name of PETROWEST S.A. on this 27‘” day of April 2011. Given at Victoria, Seychelles.”

Differrent story with Petrowest S.A and Ovlas S.A in Panama

In a separate document, it was shown that while Petrowest swallowed Ovlas S.A in Seychelles in 2011, courtesy of the name change, Petrowest S.A Panama only bought 100 units of shares at $100 each from Ovlas to become shareholder in the company. That happened on October 12, 2012.

A web of intrigues, companies within companies

Specifically, Messrs. Dantata, Anil Kumar Ahluwalia and M.R.S Investments Company share same company address – Plot 6, Block 2, Osborne Road, Ikoyi, Lagos Island – in entities incorporated for them offshore by Mossack Fonseca.

The M.R.S Investments Companies mentioned earlier is a subsidiary of MRS Holdings.

Anil Kumar Ahluwalia, whose company name is Santosh Investment Limited S.A is connected to a Panama shell company called Lotus Trust Services Sarl.

Similarly, MRS Investments Company Limited is a shareholder company to Chalmers Shipping Incorporation, which in turn is directly connected to another shell company named Afrex Sal, also domicilled in Panama.

Afrex Sal is a client company for Mr Dantata and Dangote’s Ovlas Trading based in Monaco France. Ovlas Trading is co-owned by Sayyu Dantata and Patrice Alberti in the name of Ovlas Trading S.A., for 75 shares with a par value of US$ 100,00 each; and in the name of Karbelina Investments LLC, for 25 shares with a par value of USS 100,00 each.

Messrs Dangote and Dantata have allegedly used their multiple companies in Nigeria and other countries to secure huge loans. For instance in 2010, the management of Bank PHB, a Nigerian bank, dragged M.R.S Holdings Limited, owned by Mr. Dantata, to court over the non- payment of Fifty-Eight million dollars ($USD 58M) loan the bank granted it to purchase Chevron Texaco in 2008.

In a similar development in September 2014, Sani Dangote, younger brother to Mr. Dangote, was dragged before a Federal High Court in Lagos over his alleged failure to liquidate about N5 billion loan granted him by Union Bank.

In its suit, Union Bank alleged that in a bid to evade payment of the loan, Sani Dangote made efforts to deplete funds in his accounts by diverting them to Dubai, Canada and Switzerland.

This page has been viewed 324 times