Although 10 accounts were linked to All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, by United States authorities in the early 90s, $460,000 were deducted from one of the accounts as tax on investments domiciled in US banks.
This was the submission of the Chief Spokesperson for the Tinubu-Shettima Presidential Campaign Council, Festus Keyamo, on Channels Televisionโs Politics Today programme on Wednesday.
He was commenting on the controversy surrounding a document recently released by the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois said to have investigated Tinubuโs alleged involvement in narcotics and money laundering about 30 years ago.
The matter, which ended in a settlement, led to Tinubuโs forfeiture of $460,000 in one of the accounts linked to the former governor of Lagos State.
Keyamo said Tinubu took responsibility for all the 10 accounts because they were also traced to his mother and โrelativesโ.
He also said Tinubu was roped in the drug trafficking case of two Nigerians who once stayed in separate flats in the same building where the ex-governor stayed at a time in the US.
โHe, Asiwaju, went to open an account, the address by which he opened the account was already used by these peopleโฆinvestigated for narcotics,โ he said.
Keyamo further stated that Tinubu was an employee of Mobil Oil and not a treasurer of a drug cartel.
He explained that Tinubu deposited some funds in bank accounts in the US as investments and got returns on those investments.
The spokesman said the banks were supposed to deduct taxes from the investments but they did not and this was not a โdeliberate actโ on the part of Tinubu.
โThe deposits he made there (in banks) are what bankers called investments; he kept the money there and he was getting interests. They (US government) said he had not paid tax on those interests. That is all and guess what? The banks are supposed to deduct the tax from source.
โOut of the 10 accounts, it was only one account โ the one in Heritage Bank โ that they took $460,000 as tax on interest that he benefited on the investment he made in those accounts.
โIn fact, all the money in Heritage Bank was not taken; they took only $460,000 as tax,โ said Keyamo, who is also the Minister of State, Labour and Employment.
Keyamo insisted that there was no criminal indictment or conviction against Tinubu, alleging that the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was behind the reincarnation of the controversial court document.
โHis (Tinubuโs) detractors kept bringing up these issues over and over when his political profile is rising, when he wants to run for office or any political turn in his life, they will bring up these issues,โ Keyamo said.
โThe date on the papers flying up and down, the date of certification is 2022, so they are using this to confuse people that these are fresh papers. If documents are 40 years old or 100 years old, once you go to court, and apply for certified true copies of those documents, they will give you those documents but they will stamp the day they are giving you those documents.
โThis is what our detractors, the PDP, perhaps that is what they went to the US for when they pretended that they went for high-level engagement. This is part of the high-level engagement they went for.โ
Tinubu, 70, is in the 2023 contest for Aso Rockโs top job alongside top contenders like PDPโs Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi of the Labour Party in the contest many analysts have described as a three-horse race.
