Until last month, Nigerian presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar had a problem. He was persona non grata in the U.S. after cropping up in connection with several corruption investigations.

Then the cloud lifted. Years after he’d last been seen in the U.S., Abubakar surfaced in Washington in January. He held court at the Trump International Hotel. He met with members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Congress. Those meetings were trumpeted to his followers back home on Facebook and Twitter. The public tour has helped silence opponents who said Abubakar couldn’t effectively lead one of Africa’s biggest economies if he wasn’t even welcome in the U.S.

Abubakar had been blocked from entering the U.S. under a State Department edict applying to officials linked to foreign corruption, two former U.S. officials said. One of them said the Nigerian had been seeking a waiver to enter the country for years and expressed surprise when told that the effort was ultimately successful.

Abubakar’s rehabilitation was driven in part by Washington lobbyists and lawyers with links to President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential race. Ballard Partners -- run by Brian Ballard, a fundraiser for Trump’s campaign who now has a deep roster of clients eager for an inside track to the administration -- helped set up meetings for the candidate in the U.S., according to people familiar with the firm’s work for him.

Law firm Holland & Knight lobbied the State Department, House of Representatives and National Security Council on Abubakar’s behalf on visa issues, according to a disclosure filed with Congress. The firm’s lead lobbyist on the effort was Scott Mason, who previously directed congressional relations for Trump’s campaign and transition team.


In defusing opponents’ chief criticism, the U.S. visit and meetings positioned Abubakar as a stronger challenger, not to mention a potential international partner to the U.S. should he prevail in Nigeria’s Feb. 16 presidential race. He’s the leading opposition candidate to run Africa’s most populous nation and top petroleum producer, where wealth and corruption mix with extreme poverty to create deep concerns about security and safety.

A member of Abubakar’s communications team, Boladale Adekoya, denied Abubakar had been banned from the U.S. A State Department representative declined to comment.

Mason didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Ballard referred questions to its lead lobbyist for Abubakar’s political party, James P. Rubin, who said he wasn’t involved in getting the travel visa and was focused on pushing for fair elections in Nigeria.

Cash in Freezer

Abubakar’s troubles with the U.S. date back more than a decade. In 2004, George W. Bush signed a presidential proclamation meant to deny corrupt foreign officials a coveted luxury -- fluid access to the good life in America and a safe place to stash ill-gotten proceeds.

Abubakar’s name surfaced in two criminal cases in the U.S. -- the prosecution of German engineering giant Siemens AG for paying bribes to officials in Africa, and the prosecution of former U.S. Representative William Jefferson.

In the latter case, Abubakar, then Nigeria’s vice president, gained notoriety for his connection to $90,000 in cash found in Jefferson’s freezer in 2005. In a secretly videotaped conversation, Jefferson told an undercover informant that the money was for Abubakar, intended to smooth the way for a U.S. company’s African expansion. Prosecutors never introduced evidence showing Abubakar solicited or accepted a bribe, and he was never prosecuted. Jefferson was convicted, though his case was partially overturned on appeal.


Abubakar was also the subject of a 2010 congressional investigation, which found that he and his wife transferred more than $40 million in suspect funds into the U.S. from offshore corporations. Lawmakers said Abubakar held a stake in an oil-services company that received hundreds of millions of dollars in payments from Western companies seeking to do business in Africa, including when he was vice president.

Abubakar has attributed his wealth to prudent investments and luck. In an interview, Edward Weidenfeld, a Washington lawyer who represented Abubakar at the time of the Jefferson and Siemens cases, said he maintained his innocence in those proceedings.

Adekoya, the Abubakar spokesman, said Jefferson had falsely accused Abubakar of being the intended recipient of the cash. Regarding the $40 million Abubakar brought into the U.S., Adekoya said it was intended as payment to American University to launch a school in Nigeria. He added that Abubakar is a “reputable entrepreneur" and a successful businessman, that his funds were from legitimate business ventures and that his oil-services stake was held in trust while he was in office.

Visa Waiver

Once the State Department bars a foreign official it becomes difficult to get the ban rescinded, according to the two officials. By U.S. law, the status of visa applications is confidential. So are the identities of barred foreign officials. The process by which people get on or off the list is also opaque.

In certain cases, the department will grant temporary waivers allowing dignitaries to visit, often with limits on duration and itinerary. If indeed a ban were in place, Abubakar may have been granted a waiver to encourage good relations should he win, one of the officials said.

Holland & Knight, which was hired at the end of October, disclosed payments of $80,000 in relation to its visa work for Abubakar.

[/b]Through his spokesman, Abubakar said he applied for and received a visa through the U.S. mission in Nigeria.

[b]Abubakar’s People’s Democratic Party of Nigeria inked a $1.1 million annual contract with Ballard Partners last fall, according to foreign lobbying records filed with the Justice Department. People familiar with Ballard’s work on Abubakar’s behalf said it included getting him a meeting at the State Department during his visit and shepherding him to various events.

Rubin, Ballard’s primary lobbyist on behalf of Abubakar’s party, was an assistant secretary of state during the Clinton administration. He joined Ballard’s firm as a lobbyist last year, according to a disclosure filing. (He was also previously an executive who helped lead Bloomberg’s editorial page, then called Bloomberg View.)

“My work on behalf of the People’s Democratic Party exclusively focused on pushing for free and fair elections and did not involve any consular matter or visa matter,” Rubin said.

Ballard’s Roster

Ballard Partners opened its Washington office in 2017, just months after Trump’s election. Ballard had previously been as a lobbyist in Florida for Trump; after the election, he was a member of Trump’s inaugural committee. The expanding client roster includes household corporate names such as Amazon.com Inc., Boeing Co., Uber Technologies Inc. and H&R Block Inc., according to lobbying disclosures filed with Congress.

Ballard has also attracted a roster of foreign governments such as Kosovo, Qatar, the Maldives and Azerbaijan. Another pair of clients, the Republic of Turkey and Turkiye Halk Bankasi AS, have been implicated in U.S. court proceedings in a scheme to aid Iranian sanctions evasion, for which Halkbank remains under scrutiny by U.S. authorities.

The firm has also been expanding and adding firepower, in recent weeks hiring other Trump loyalists including a recent White House spokesman, Raj Shah, and the former attorney general of Florida, Pam Bondi. As attorney general, Bondi declined to pursue fraud charges against Trump University after Trump’s charitable foundation gave $25,000 in 2013 to a re-election fund for Bondi.

During his visit, Abubakar held a “town hall” at the Trump International Hotel in Washington to meet with Nigerians in the U.S. He also appeared on a panel at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, stopped at the office of the Voice of America and met with Representative Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican. Abubakar’s campaign broadcast the town hall meeting on Facebook, and he posted a string of photos of his U.S. visit and meetings to his Twitter account, including one from his arrival at the airport putting him back on U.S. soil.

A spokesman for Smith didn’t respond to questions about the meeting. A Chamber of Commerce spokeswoman said the roundtable discussion was private.

— With assistance by Greg Farrell, Tope Alake, and Bill Allison

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-04/trump-linked-lobbyists-help-nigerian-politician-gain-u-s-access

Atiku knows this. He would rather lose elections than to visit the US anyhow.

Pics attached: Atiku In US

Meanwhile we all seem to have forgotten how Buhari's Snake swallowed almost N500m PTF money, an equivalent of more than N10 billion today.

Buhari is the biggest criminal in the history of Nigeria.

https://www.nairaland.com/5030647/how-buhari-ran-ptf-missing

Here is how Buhari ran PTF

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has exposed former head of state, General Mohammadu Buhari’s mismanagement of Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF). ThisDay in an exclusive report said the exposure was contained in the original copy of a report by the Petroleum (Special) Trust Fund (PTF) Interim Management Committee, instituted on July 7, 1999 by Obasanjo.

The development has called to question the ability of the Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Buhari, to manage the Nigerian economy and fight corruption, if elected president in the face of deepening world economic crisis. According to the report, the PTF under Buhari's supervision was mismanaged. The report was however neither made public nor was it acted upon by the ex- president. READ

The report revealed that the Committee had advised Obasanjo to "set up a high powered judicial panel to recover the huge public fund and to take necessary action against any officer, consultant or contractor whose negligence resulted in this colossal loss of public funds." The report further disclosed that the sum of N25, 758, 532, 448 was mismanaged by the Afri-Project Consortium (APC), a company contracted by the PTF as management and project consultant when Buhari was the chairman. It was stated that Buhari delegated to the Afri-Project Consortium the power of Engineer in all appropriate project requiring such power, which made them assume absolute powers to initiate, approve and execute all projects by the PTF.

In summary, the mismanagement of funds under Buhari’s chairmanship of the PTF was carried out by the APC (the company) in their capacity as management and project consultants. It said both their management services fee and budget for various projects executed during the existence of the PTF were greatly overpriced. However, the Committee made up of Dr. Haroun Adam as Chairman, and Alhaji Abdu Abdurrahim, Mr Achana Gaius Yaro, Edward Eguavoen, Mr. T. Andrew Adegboro and Mr. Baba Goni Machina as members, while carrying out its obligations, engaged three management consulting firms to verify all payments made to PTF from inception to September 30, 1999.

The Committee during verification discovered that the consulting firms had overcharged PTF for their services to the tune of N2, 057, 550, 062. Also, while intervening on behalf of the PTF in the road and waterways, education, food, health, and other sectors, the company, according to the report, inflated all the prices. For example, intervention in the health sector, was said to have amounted to N9 billion in total, and projects in this sector were said to have been executed by the APC and PTF in-house staff, where loss of billions of naira were recorded due to price inflation of products and services. The committee also discovered that the APC (Company) bought spectacle frames, which could have been done locally at a price between N80 to N880, under the watch of Buhari, at an inflated price of N1, 900 each. Ambulances were said to have been purchased at N13 million per unit, instead of N3 million. And then price inflation of drugs were done to the tune of N1.5 billion.

The report further revealed that the PTF lost money to the tune of N3.5 billion from its bank account operations and that PTF operated its bank accounts under three different categories: Administration, Project and Treasury accounts, and the loss of money to these accounts were said to have been due to "overcharge on Cost of Turnover (CoT), non-payment of interest on current account balances as stipulated by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), short payment of interest on deposited funds, and other various discrepancies." READ ALSO: GMB's Military Regime Vs GEJ's Civilian Administration The Committee also discovered that an average income of N182 billion accrued to the PTF from its inception to the date of filing their report. The Committee’s report showed that the PTF used about 70 per cent of that income on highways and urban road projects. "In this project sector there was total variation of contract sums of N68 billion. These variations were not done with properly priced bills of quantities and approved civil contracts procedure as stipulated by government regulations.

Taking the experience of what has been discovered after verification of various contracts awarded by PTF the minimum potential recovery will be about 15%. This estimated percentage will be about N10 billion. The verification of this project sector was about to take off when the committee members were replaced," the report stated. Meanwhile, the country’s main opposition party has been constantly lambasting the President Goodluck Jonathan-led administration on corruption, recently urged Nigerians to vote out Jonathan in 2015 or else the nation will be worse for it.

Read more: https://www.legit.ng/353981-obasanjo-exposes-buharis-mismanagement-of-ptf.html

Okay

APC Afonja clowns,

They tried the Atiku is a thief propaganda, e no work

They tried the Atiku can not go to America propaganda, e no work

They played the tribal card, it's currently failing

Now they have gone back to Atiku can not go to America now.

Buhari is a goner, SAI ATIKU

You can lie all you want since it's 4days to election...

- All I see is a resilient aspirant, who breaks open closed doors, no matter the difficulty..

- A Dogged aspirant that in little time penetrated the US presidency to achieve result..

- This is the kind of President Nigeria needs, a man that is addicted to results.

It's common knowledge Buhari/El-rufai were banned from the US aswell.

And so what?

Jefferson was facing a long jail term and had to implicate others to reduce his sentence.

Did Atiku receive any money from Jefferson?
The answer is NO.

We still dey vote am.... America no be Naija! I just need a President that can take responsibility for anything going on in the country. Not doz that can blame mosquitoes!

Make USA gang up with our government figure out how to make Nigeria better then deport all our "we die here brothers" in their states Its a win win situation for them you know but NO! they are smart enough to milk those going over there DRY via taxes thinking they enjoying life by ditching their own country while enriching others..One day its gonna happen..Oneday!What am I even saying sef

ok

Bloomberg will soon deny this report. APC are desperate.

n

Wailers over to you
Voting for crook, God forbids

Rubbish

Even in the States

Regardless of this news Buhari must go. Let start growing our economy and fighting poverty

Let's wait for debunk news from APC at morning you hear one at night you hear another lol

We hear......!! At least when he becomes our President he will gum his ass here in Nigeria, instead of junketing around the Country like Buhari that visited 14 Countries under 2weeks

by this time next week ... US will be the one to invite him specially ....and if otherwise...US is not heaven where everybody must go.....if we have business together dey can come here or we meet somewhere else....
.....even if there is no ballot paper ....i will take white plain paper draw umbrella in it and put it inside ballot box......

We have gone past the Visa issue, he is not planning to relocate to America, whether waiver or beaver, he has gone and returned, America is not his country. Next story please!

We haff hear!

This won't deter us from sending HIM back to Daura!

There is something wrong about Eastern people. They dont care who you are or what you do. Just have money and you have won their hearts. If you like use their children for rituals, because you have money, they are ready to worship you as their new god. Im glad everytime I wake up, I am not an Okoro.

Support Atiku/Obi at your own peril

Hey!

Everyday Atiku is corrupo and Mr integrity cannot charge him to court. I thought he's fighting corruption
And no other they have against him. No Nigerian firm has come out to claim how Atiku defraud them...
Abeg APC sponsored media, if you don't have any other thing to say against that man just your mouth shut. Haba! Kilode

in summary?