Just a day after PREMIUM TIMES reported that the wife of Kaduna South Senator Sunday Katung is involved in a money laundering mess in the UK, the senator has defended his family against any wrongdoing.
A recent UK court proceeding granted a forfeiture order on a property paid for by Mrs Katung.
The court ordered the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) to take possession and recover the property.
The property, occupied by Mrs Katung and her children, was owned by a wealthy businessman, Mansoor Hussain, whom investigators had previously accused of being a money laundererfor major crime lords in the north of England.
Senator’s claim
In response to this newspaper’s exclusive story, Mr Katung said the “sensational headline is not in harmony with the contents of the report itself.”
The report, published on Tuesday, was titled “EXCLUSIVE: Wife of Nigerian senator in money laundering mess in UK” and focused on Mr Katung’s wife, Abigail Katung, the Lord Mayor of Leeds.
The senator, in the statement by his spokesperson, Midat Joseph, also said that he and his wife have always conducted their affairs “lawfully and transparently and will pursue all necessary legal action to correct this defamatory narrative” against them.
He also made reference to a part of the story wherein this newspaper reported that the judge said she could not establish that Mrs Katung had any knowledge of Mr Hussain’s alleged criminal activities, saying, “I therefore make it crystal clear that I do not find that she was cognisant of what Mr Hussain was up to.”
“The above no doubt is not in harmony with the sensational headline making reference to money laundering, which did not have the honour of even a mere mention in the entire judgment,” Mr Joseph wrote.
Avoiding responsibility
However, what the senator avoided mentioning in his statement was that while the judge said she could not ascertain that Mrs Katung was aware of Mr Hussain’s alleged criminal activities, the judge also questioned the shady nature of the payments made by the lawmaker’s wife.
In fact, the judge ruled that Mrs Katung was only “conducting a business in foreign exchange transactions to circumvent Nigerian foreign exchange regulations and/or to avoid a punitive exchange rate.”
In essence, the judge ruled against the senator’s wife, not just because of Mr Hussain’s involvement but also because of the shady nature of the transaction that involved circumventing “Nigerian foreign exchange regulations and/or to avoid a punitive exchange rate.”
As reported in our earlier story, Mrs Katung made a deposit of £400,000, of the total £1,000,000, to acquire the property in 2015.
The UK High Court investigated the source of £360,000 from Mrs Katung’s initial deposit. Court documents in the civil case suggested money laundering activities in Mrs Katung’s transaction, which was made between April and May 2015.
Mrs Katung told the court that her husband obtained a loan of N120 million from a Nigerian bank and then used a Bureau De Change Operator (BDC) in Nigeria to exchange naira into pounds sterling and remit it to a Barclays bank account in the name of 1st Resource, a company owned by Mrs Katung.
She said her husband used agents in the UK to get the money to her via her company’s account.
Judgement against Mrs Katung
The court found that the majority of payments made into the bank account of 1st Resource could not have been from UK agents of BDCs in Nigeria.
The judge also held that the use of Mrs Katung’s company for the purpose of that transaction was improper.
He also instructed Mrs Katung to prepare her defence and provide an “adequate, documented explanation” of the transaction.
But, she has failed to do that, the judge said in her ruling, adding, “It was incumbent on her to take proactive steps to ensure that a properly evidenced account was given to the Court.”
Also, “Mrs Katung’s witness statements in the proceedings did not address how the payments were made, nor did they seek to explain what she had said at interview.”
“More surprisingly, Mrs Katung has disclosed very little documentation which bears on these transfers, and there is no witness statement from her husband. These are telling omissions from which I draw an adverse inference,” the judge said.
The judge added that he was satisfied on the “balance of probabilities” that some of the BDCs mentioned by Mrs Katung were not even licensed to undertake foreign exchange transactions in Nigeria.
Therefore, the judge ruled that Mrs Katung was only “conducting a business in foreign exchange transactions to circumvent Nigerian foreign exchange regulations and/or to avoid a punitive exchange rate.”
“I reach my conclusion on the basis of: (1) paragraph 72 of Mr Coles’ eighth witness statement (2) the adverse inferences to be drawn from the Honey Oil material, and (3) the adverse inferences to be drawn from Mrs Katung’s failure to file a witness statement from her husband and to disclose relevant documentation,” the judge said.
In their argument, the NCA contended that the entire property, including the deposit made by Mrs Katung, represented money obtained by criminal conduct. Hence, the property was recoverable property under the UK Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA).
The court concluded that the property and its possession should be recovered by the NCA and should be treated as vesting the entirety of the property in the Trustee.
The judge added that “no credit falls to be given for the value of the deposit payments made by Mrs Katung.”
In his Wednesday statement, the senator’s spokesperson said the judgement against Mrs Katung was already a “subject matter of an appeal. It is therefore too early in the day to draw conclusions until the appeal process has been exhausted.”
“For the avoidance of doubt, Senator Sunday Marshall Katung and his Wife, Abigail Katung have always conducted their affairs lawfully and transparently, and will pursue all necessary legal action to correct this defamatory narrative.”
(Premium Times)
