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Showing posts from March, 2016

Secret Documents Expose Nigerian Oil Mogul’s Offshore Hideaways

In September 2015, Beyoncé sat on a yacht drinking sparkling wine with her legs wrapped under a striped, earth-toned blanket as the Faraglioni rocks, near Capri on Italy’s west coast, passed by. The singer and her husband, Jay Z, paid a reported $900,000 that week to sail the Mediterranean Sea on the Galactica Star, a 65-meter private cruiser with a helipad, 10 dining areas, Jacuzzi and sun deck. Unknown to the celebrity couple, the yacht’s owner was soon to be a wanted man. Held through a shell company created by the law firm at the heart of the Panama Papers scandal, Mossack Fonseca, the yacht is now caught up in a massive investigation in Nigeria. The government claims the yacht was bought with profits from crude oil sales that were diverted and never paid to authorities. The Galactica Star’s owner is Kolawole Aluko, a petroleum and aviation mogul who is one of four defendants accused of helping to cheat Nigeria out of nearly $1.8 billion owed to the government on massi