European Court backs Jersey decision in Nigerian money laundering case

Wednesday 13 July 2016

The European Court of Human Rights has upheld a Jersey Royal Court ruling which sentenced Raj Arjandas Bhojwani to six years in jail for a multi-million pound money laundering scam.

Bhojwani, 59, was jailed in 2010 on three counts of money laundering – he was also ordered to forfeit £26.5million - after the Court heard he was employed by Nigerian dictator General Sani Abacha, who led a military regime that ruled the African country from 1993 to 1998.

While Abacha was estimated to have stolen £2.2billion from the African state through theft and inflated invoices, Indian national Bhojwani was involved in a lucrative deal to sell trucks to the Nigerian Army at five-times their real value, generating enormous profits.

The Attorney General Robert MacRae today said Bhojwani’s conviction and the rejection of his latest appeal, this time by the European Court of Human Rights, shows Jersey’s “commitment to fighting financial crime and money laundering.”

Bhojwani was paid $178 million between 1996 and the following year and put all the money into accounts at the Bank of India in Jersey. The Royal Court estimated that he profited to the tune of around $40million from the scam. 

At his trial at the Royal Court in 2010, Bhojwani claimed that the use of private business documents by Jersey’s Attorney General was an abuse of power because a Nigerian court had ruled that they had been unlawfully obtained.

This was rejected by the Royal Court and Bhojwani was jailed in 2010. A subsequent appeal was also rejected a year later.

Bhojwani appealed again, this time to the European Court of Human Rights, claiming he has been denied a fair trial because of hearsay evidence, in the form of business documents and witness statements.

Bhojwani’s lawyers argued that the evidence brought against him was “unlawfully obtained, without the consent of the Nigerian Government, was an abuse of executive power and a breach of Nigerian sovereignty and international law.”

But this has now been unanimously rejected by all seven judges on the European Court, who said that the Royal Court was within their rights to sentence Bhojwani for money laundering. 

Attorney General Robert MacRae QC today reacted to the ruling, saying, “The judgment of the European Court of Human Rights released today marks the end of a very substantial criminal prosecution in Jersey litigated over many years in which Mr Bhojwani was convicted of money laundering and forfeited the sum of £26.5 million.

“The case is now concluded and we are pleased that the European Court has unanimously held that the Mr Bhojwani’s complaint that he was denied a fair trial is inadmissible.

“The case demonstrates Jersey’s commitment to fighting financial crime and money laundering.”