MINISTERS, DEFENCE CHIEFS LINKED TO PLANNED PURCHASE OF N10 BILLION ABANDONED KENYAN VESSEL

The Controversial KNS Jasiri, originally owned by Kenya and abandoned since 2005

Competent sources have revealed to Pointblanknews.com that the Minister for Defence, Bello Haliru, Chief of Defence, Air Chief Marshal Oluseyi Pentirin Staff, and Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral OS Ibrahim are all in the know of the plan to purchase an abandoned Kenyan Vessel for an inflated N10 Billion.

The trio allegedly smuggled the planned purchase into the 2012 budget of the Nigeria Navy currently before the National Assembly.

The Kenyan Government had abandoned the controversial Vessel in Barcelona, Spain when it smelled foul play.

Haliru had been named in the AG Siemens scandal where he was alleged to have collected €70,000 in two installments.  He was appointed Minister for Defense By president Goodluck Jonathan.

Pointblanknews.com had in a well detailed exclusive, exposed the planned purchase of an abandoned rusty Navy Oceanographic Survey Vessel valued at about $30 Million for the Nigerian Navy for N10 Billion.

Kenya, the original owner of the Vessel named KNS Jasiri, was made to sign the contract for the Vessel procurement in 2003 for £51, 997,00 Million (about N8.4 Billion) but had to stop payment when Euromarine, the Barcelona, Spain based company contracted to do the job allegedly inflated the actual cost of the project.

Sources told Pointblanknews.com that a Sri Lankan tycoon Anura Pereira and one Deepak Kamani who have been severally indicted for corruption including contract inflation in Kenya searched the world looking for potential buyers for the controversial Vessel.

A top source at the Defense Ministry in Nigeria told Pointblanknews.com “they came first through some people and I heard they were referred to the Minister and before we knew it, we saw the item in the budget.”

The source added, “we did our own investigation about that Vessel and we found out that such is not befitting for the Navy of today, not even the smallest country in the world will buy such. We don’t understand why our Government want to spend such amount on a worthless Vessel.”

According to the source, “it was not in the original budget of the Navy, I guess it was smuggled in like they did other items.

The Senate Committee on Appropriation had announced that some ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) of government secretly smuggled over N1 trillion of projects into the N4.7 trillion budgets for 2012, and may have shot up the budget to N5.7 trillion.

Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriation, Senator Ahmed Maccido, who made the disclosure, alleged that over 40 per cent of the projects in the MDA’s were not captured in the budget presented to the National Assembly by the president on December 13 2011.

He said: “These projects were smuggled into the budget by the MDAs and we at the committee level would jettison them because they are not in the original budget.”

The Appropriation Committee chairman said: “The problem is that we are seeing projects that are not in the original version of the budget presented to us by President Goodluck Jonathan and substantial parts of these projects are being smuggled into the budget by the MDAs and ministers.

“Over 40 per cent of the projects in the budget were not in the original budget. And we are saying no to this.
“The items so smuggled into the budget are over N1 trillion. So we are right now comparing the budget as originally presented by the president and the version presented by the MDAs.

“Unless these projects were there in the original budget, we are going to scrap them. It is no longer going to be business as usual.”

However, Haliru, a notoriously corrupt politician was in 2007 linked to the bribery scandal involving communications firm Siemens AG where he was alleged to have collected €70,000 in two installments.

In 2007 a German court allegedly named several prominent Nigerians, including Haliru, in a bribery scandal involving communications firm Siemens AG. Bello was alleged to have collected €70,000 in two installments, a charge that he denied.

In total, the court found that Siemens had paid out €12 million in bribes to obtain contracts in Nigeria and other countries, and fined the company €201 million. In November 2007 the German authorities provided fresh information on the Siemens bribery scandal.

The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) launched an investigation. President Umaru Yar'Adua said of the case "... there will neither be sacred cows nor a cover up for anybody found culpable of breaching the law".

In August 2008, Bello received the Diamond Nigerian Telecoms Award at a ceremony in Lagos, Nigeria.