Alison-Madueke was minister of petroleum resources between 2010 and 2015 under then-President Goodluck Jonathan.<\/p>\n
Jurors were told she lived some of the time in the UK where she was provided with a housekeeper, nanny, gardener and window cleaner.<\/p>\n
The salaries and other running costs were paid for by the owners of energy companies who had lucrative contracts with the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, the court was told.<\/p>\n
“This case is about bribery in relation to the oil and gas industry in Nigeria during the period 2011 to 2015,” said Alexandra Healy KC, prosecuting.<\/p>\n
“During that time those who were interested in the award and retention of lucrative oil and gas contracts with the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation or its subsidiaries the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company and the Pipelines Product Marketing Company, provided significant financial or other advantages to Alison-Madueke.”<\/p>\n
Healy added: “It might seem strange to be dealing here in the UK with a case that concerns bribery in relation to the Nigerian oil and gas industry.<\/p>\n
“We live in a global society. Bribery and corruption undermine the proper functioning of the global market. <\/p>\n
“There is an important public interest in ensuring that conduct in our country does not further corruption in another country.”<\/p>\n
Alison-Madueke sat in the dock besides oil industry executive Olatimbo Ayinde, 54, who is charged with one count of bribery relating to Alison-Madueke and a separate count of bribery of a foreign public official.<\/p>\n
Alison-Madueke’s brother, former archbishop Doye Agama, 69, is charged with conspiracy to commit bribery and joined the trial by video link for medical reasons.<\/p>\n
Ayinde and Agama also deny the charges against them.<\/p>\n
The trial \u2013 expected to last about 12 weeks – continues.<\/p>\n
Oil plays a significant role in Nigeria’s economy, but the population at large has not seen the benefits.<\/p>\n
It is one of the 13 members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec), set up to deal with the worldwide supply of oil and its price.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alison-Madueke was minister of petroleum resources between 2010 and 2015 under then-President Goodluck Jonathan. Jurors were told she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393705,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-393704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}