6. March 30, 2008 - New Ambassador General Oluwole Rotimi arrives US to report for duty in Washington DC
11. September 11, 2008 - email from Ugwuonye to Ambassador Obiozor admitting that he held on to the money for stated reasons.
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AMBASSADOR ROTIMI AND THE $20 MILLION QUESTION
The sale of houses and the fees paid out have now become the bone of contention for Ambassador Rotimi's defenders. But one thing is clear: officials at the Embassy are horrified and angry that the Ambassador is trying to bastardize their reputation by making available to journalists internal discussions at the Embassy, which could potentially jeopardize their chances of advancing in the service, depending on the prism on which they are viewed and by whom. They are angry because they have no recourse to either refute or confirm the information that Ambassador Rotimi is dishing out to his defenders. They know it is against civil service rules for them to talk to the press as the Ambassador, a political appointee, is doing. They are even more apprehensive of a total cleansing of house: the recall of most of the senior officials there.
After asking him in several ways whether he was going to return the money to the Embassy, and getting the same answer, I said "Emeka, let me ask you one more time. I want to get this straight, so there is no misunderstanding that I misquoted you. Are you going to return the $1.55 million to the Embassy or not? Is it not in your own best interest to return that money, after all you have been representing the Embassy for umpteen years?"
"Well," he said, "I can never say never. I am always willing to sit down with any of my clients and discuss my fees. If the Embassy invites me, I am willing to sit down with them and discuss my fees, including the $1.55 million."
"So you are willing to discuss returning the money to the Embassy?", I asked Mr. Ugwuonye again.
"No, I am saying that I am willing to sit down and discuss with them about my fees. You see, this is not the only case I am handling for the Embassy, I am handling a lot of other cases for them, not only related to real estate."
Mr. Ephraim Emeka Ugwuonye, is a lawyer (although he would prefer to be known as the most influential Nigerian attorney in the Washington, DC area), whose office is based in Silver Spring, on the outskirts of Washington, DC. He has been practicing law since 1995, and has been representing the Nigerian Embassy that long, through the tenures of Ambassadors Kazaure, Hassan Adamu, Jibril Aminu and George Obiozor.
The sale of houses and the fees paid out have now become the bone of contention for Ambassador Rotimi's defenders. But one thing is clear: officials at the Embassy are horrified and angry that the Ambassador is trying to bastardize their reputation by making available to journalists internal discussions at the Embassy, which could potentially jeopardize their chances of advancing in the service, depending on the prism on which they are viewed and by whom. They are angry because they have no recourse to either refute or confirm the information that Ambassador Rotimi is dishing out to his defenders. They know it is against civil service rules for them to talk to the press as the Ambassador, a political appointee, is doing. They are even more apprehensive of a total cleansing of house: the recall of most of the senior officials there.
The real estate transactions happened during the Obasanjo adminsitration, and after Nigerian Embassy moved from its previous locations at 1333 16th Street, NW, and the 'M' Street, NW, to its current edifice located at 3519 International Court, NW, where many other embassies are located, and a building currently valued at a little less than $20 million. When the offices were moved, the properties stopped being maintained and there were complaints filed against the Embassy for the unkempt premises, prompting the State Department to issue warnings to the Embassy. Again, two of the houses occupied by the Ambassador and his deputy had become dilapidated, especially the Ambassador's house on Connecticut Avenue, NW, was located on a noisy heavily trafficked road. The deputy ambassador's at Woodlawn had also deteriorated, and was being eaten away by ants.
That was when a directive from the Obasanjo presidency, through the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Alhaji Sule Lamido, for the four buildings and houses to be sold.
The then Ambassador of Nigeria to Washington, DC, Prof. George Obiozor, decided to set up a 7-man property management committee to manage the sales of the properties, with the then deputy chief of mission, Ambassador Okon I. Udoh, as chairman of the committee. A specific instruction from the presidency was that the Ambassador's house on Connecticut Avenue should not be sold for less than the amount used in purchasing the house on the Potomac, a much more secluded area.
The amount of $20 million was realised for the sale of those four properties. Instructions were issued from the presidency that the money should be deposited in a specialized account, and the said $20 million, now a little more than $20 million, is still in that account.
However, when Brigadier-General Oluwole Rotimi arrived in Washington, March, 2008 as the Ambassador of Nigeria to the U.S., and saw this huge amount of money, first he tried to take control of the account on the pretext that his officers were not being paid. But senior officials at the Embassy seriously warned him that the money was not to be touched. Then he turned around and began to suspect that something was not right, that there must have been some kind of corruption that went with the sale of the properties.
What Ambassador Oluwole Rotimi couldn't believe was that there were some very honest civil servants - career diplomats if you wish - who believed in transparency. He began covertly probing his predecessor, Ambassador Obiozor, who ignorant of what was going on, was enthusiastically doing everything to ensure a smooth transition and also introduction to his colleagues, even after leaving Washington, DC. Even when he wrote a letter to Ugwuonye in August, 2008, he was still unaware that he was the focus of investigation.
"Then as soon as Ambassador Rotimi noticed the name Emeka Ugwuonye and George Obiozor, he suspected collusion. He became ballistic; personally I don't understand how somebody with such Igbo hatred could have been made the Ambassador representing all Nigerians. If Ambassador Rotimi says he has talked to me since he arrived, I will initiate a suit against him for defamation," according to Ugwuonye.
"Obiozor has nothing to do with my withholding the money or not. In fact, he is the one who wrote to me asking me to refund the money to the Embassy. But listen, the Embassy owes me a lot of money. I have even forgiven a $1 million that they owe for work I did for them in New York. People are writing all kinds of rubbish in the internet, they are jealous and they can't stand the fact that I am the most influential Nigerian attorney in the Washington, DC area (I thought he was going to say in the whole U.S.)."
"I have been practicing law since 1995, and I have built a 22-man law firm," Mr. Ugwuonye boasted.
"But you were suspended for 90 days by the State of Maryland from practicing law," I said to Mr. Ugwuonye. "And how could you be doing work for them when you are also suspended in New York State from practicing law?" I asked Mr. Ugwuonye.
Ugwuonye seemed taken aback by these questions. He quickly recovered, cleared his throat, and said, "If you have been practicing law for 15 years and have a 22-man office, somebody is likely to run afoul of the law. And the fact is that anything that happens in this law firm is my responsibility. So, I was suspended for 90 days from October, 2008. Well, it is over," though I didn't see where Mr. Ugwuonye has corrected the sanctions imposed on him. But reading through the case, I agree it was one of the lawyers in his office who was responsible for the breach of proper legal representation.
"But the one in New York is not over," I advised him as a consequence of being suspended in Maryland and the District of Columbia (Washington, DC). "Well, I will take care of it when I have to do something in New York state."
It is difficult to understand why Ambassador Rotimi has now chosen this line of defence. Seriously, it is really disingenuous for Segun Gbadegesin implying that Dr. Obiozor was complicit in Mr. Ugwuonye's actions, when he wrote as follows, "It was after the intervention of Professor Obiozor that the Nigerian attorney formally replied to Ambassador Rotimi through a lawyer that he was not going to return the $1.5 million to the embassy because the Federal Government of Nigeria owed him legal fees on a different matter for which he had been retained. Therefore, he was going to pay himself with the tax refunded by the State of Maryland to the Embassy."
Obiozor's letter faxed to me by Mr. Ugwuonye speaks for itself. Obviously, Ambassador Rotimi was badly misdavised in dredging up the ghosts of the Biafran-Nigerian war. It showed for who he was: a man who has harbored uncontrollable anger toward the Igbo and a man who doesn't believe that the Igbo deserve to be at the table in the uppermost echelons of Nigerian affairs. That he apologized in a statement, but has now decided to drag innocent people down with him, says a lot about his earlier intentions.
The Ugwuonye versus the Embassy's $1.55 million refund should not have been brought into the sordid and indefensible utterances of Ambassador Rotimi, but the more one looks at it, it begins to assuredly show that he indeed wanted to take control of the $20 million before honest career diplomats at the Embassy thwarted his ambitions. It was indeed a brazen attempt at trying to do business as usual in the Nigerian corrupt way.
(Mr. Ugwuonye had promised to fax George Obiozor's letter to me by 11 am this morning. However, when I called his mobile around 11:45 am, a recording said to text message him as the fastest way of getting a reply. I texted him, and he replied a little after 12 noon that I should give him another one hour. By 4 pm, somebody from his office called to say that they couldn't locate the letter. When I queried whether it wouldn't be in the Nigerian Embassy file, I was told that there were so many. I was assured that before long, the letter would be located and faxed to me. Well, it is now almost 8 pm and still no letter).
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http://odili.net/news/source/2009/mar/7/14.html
GUARDIAN
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Rotimi, U.S. lawyer feud over sale of Nigerian houses
From Laolu Akande, New York
ALTHOUGH, he is being recalled home as Nigeria's Ambassador to the United States (U.S.), Brig. Gen. Oluwole Rotimi (rtd) is still raising posers over certain aspects of the sale of nation's property in Washington, DC and state of Maryland for about $25 million.
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While Rotimi argues that the money belongs to the Federal Government and should be returned to the treasury, Ugwuonye insists that he had an agreement with the embassy to put a lien (a legal hold) pending the resolution of issues sorrounding the money in lieu of other money owed him by the government for legal services rendered by his law firm of over 20 lawyers.
The Guardian learnt from the Embassy and other sources that before Rotimi assumed office, the Head of the Nigerian Embassy Chancery/Administration, Mr. Y. S. Abdulahi was authorised in August 2007 by the government to allow the lawyer impose the lien in case his fees for services rendered to the government were not paid at the time of the tax refund.
Ugwuonye had been retained by the Embassy to manage the sale of the property several years before the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency, when the sale of the property started.
He was also the lawyer that represented former head of state, Gen. Abdusalami Abubakar in the human rights violation case brought against him by Chief Anthony Enahoro and others in a U.S. District Court, first in Detroit, and later in Chicago.
Four Embassy houses were sold in the early years of President Obasanjo's first term and in 2007. The property included buildings that housed the Nigerian Embassy's operations.
The first was an abandoned property on M and Wootin Street in the U.S. capital. The building used to serve as the Embassy's offices in Washington, DC. It was sold for about $2.5 million. The second was the Nigerian Embassy office on 16th Street, sold for $7 million, while another one on M Street was sold for $12 million. They were abandoned after Nigeria built a bigger embassy office in the U.S. at International Court in Washington, DC. Former Vice President Abubakar Atiku commissioned the new office in 2003.
The 4th property sold was the Ambassador's residence on Connecticut Street, close to Washington, DC but actually located in the adjoining state of Maryland. The residence was considered a security concern because it was too close to the main road.
The sales were done when Prof. George Obiozor held sway as Nigeria's envoy.
While the transactions were completed late in 2007, a tax refund, which had been withheld - a common practice in U.S. real estate sales - from Nigeria by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service was later released through the Nigerian Attorney in the sum of $1.55 million.
Ugwuonye confirmed to The Guardian that he invoked his right to impose the lien because other fees owed him were not being paid by the government.
Rotimi, who arrived in Washington, DC in March 2008, said it was during the handover process that he was made aware of the transactions. He confirmed in a telephone chat that the embassy felt that the money belonged to the government and should be refunded.
According to him, the Embassy has paid the attorney his legal fees, adding that "we do not owe him a kobo, or dollar." Asked if he was aware that Ugwuonye had an agreement with the embassy that empowered him to invoke a lien on the refund, Rotimi challenged the lawyer to provide such proof.
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