US prosecutors have charged the chairman and CEO of Nigeria’s largest domestic airline with obstruction of justice after he allegedly submitted false documents in an attempt to end a separate bank fraud and money laundering investigation.
Allen Onyema, a former lawyer and successful Nigerian businessman, founded Air Peace in 2013 and, over the last 11 years, has grown the carrier to become the largest airline in Nigeria and West Africa.
But U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan alleges that Onyema used the airline as a cover to illegally funnel millions of dollars from Nigeria into Atlanta-based bank accounts, using the purchase of fake Boeing 737 aircraft as a cover.
According to prosecutors, Onyema and the airline’s chief financial officer, Ejiroghene Eghagha, submitted a series of export letters of credit to get banks to transfer more than $20 million into US-registered bank accounts.
The letters of credit were for the purchase of five Boeing 737 aircraft and were accompanied by purchase agreements, bills of sale, and appraisals to make the transaction look genuine.
Prosecutors, however, claim that all the documents were fake and that the Boeing 737 aircraft never even existed. Onyema would have known this because he owned the Georgia-based company from which Air Peace said it was purchasing the 737 airplanes.
After successfully funneling the money into an Atlanta bank, Onyema stands accused of laundering $16 million into other accounts that he owned.
In 2019, the Northern District of Georgia for bank fraud grew suspicious of Onyema’s business dealings and opened an investigation into the Boeing 737 purchase from Springfield Aviation.
In order to throw investigators off the scent, Onyema allegedly persuaded a manager at Springfield Aviation to draw up a key business contract but without a date. He then presented this contract to investigators as proof that the 737 transaction was genuine.
By the point the contract had reached fraud investigators, Onyema had allegedly dated the document from 2016, which is just before the multi-million-dollar fraud began.
Onyema, now 61 years old, had already been charged with a slew of money laundering and bank fraud indictments but now faces a superseding indictment alleging an additional count of obstruction of justice and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice.
“After allegedly using his airline company as a cover to commit fraud on the United States’ banking system, Onyema, along with his co-defendant, allegedly committed additional crimes of fraud in a failed attempt to derail the government’s investigation of his conduct,” commented Buchanan.
“The diligence of our federal investigative partners revealed the defendants’ alleged obstruction scheme, making it possible for the defendants to be held accountable for their aggravated conduct of attempting to impede a federal investigation.”
Nigerians? Fraud? You’re kidding me.