As the case between the London Metropolitan Police and Chief James Onanefe Ibori and associates entered the second day at the Court of Appeal on Thursday, March 22, 2018 in London, Ibori’s legal team has showed overwhelming evidence of police corruption.

In a statement, Chief Ibori’s Media Assistant, Tony Eluemunor, said that a police officer, DC John McDonald was mainly at the end of Ibori’s finger pointing because that particular officer was at the heart of the cases which started in 2006.

McDonald he said has been the topic of several police investigations and is now accepted by the British Crown Prosecution Service as being corrupt.

Eluemunor said McDonald was the one who built the Ibori investigation on inferences, instead of on proven allegations beyond every reasonable doubt.

He said Ibori’s lawyers made three key submissions on Thursday.

Eluemunor said: “The first was that the lead case officer, DC McDonald was corrupt and accepted bribes and they provided heaps of evidence in support.  Second; that the Met police deliberately covered up the corruption from 2007 till the end of the case.  Third; that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) then failed to make proper disclosure of the Police corruption to the defence team.”

He clarified that the Court was told that the conduct of Prosecution was of such gravity that to maintain conviction would bring the globally respected British administration of justice into disrepute because the Crown Prosecution had misled the Courts and Court of Appeal on several occasions.”

Eluemunor said for instance that Ms. Sasha Wass QC told UK’s Director of Public Prosecutions personally around Jan 20, 2016, that the disclosed evidence confirms that DC McDonald was corrupt.  “She described the evidence the Met Police had as high-grade intelligence but which, staggeringly, has never been provided to the Defence teams. Wass stated that she would not be prepared to prosecute any case in which DC McDonald was involved owing to the man’s track record in the Ibori case. Wass claimed that there were multiple instances where DC McDonald was paid bribes by Cliff Knuckey. The evidence comprised an internal Met Police anti-corruption report which demonstrated clear evidence including telephone traffic between RISC and some Police officers. DC McDonald was known as ‘C22’ in the records and was in receipt of payments even in another case too. ‘Source A’ intelligence in the possession of the Met confirmed a payment in September 2007. It was described by Sasha Wass QC as reliable and high grade intelligence in her statement. The Met deliberately failed to properly investigate the findings by prematurely closing down the investigation, known as Operation Limonium which revealed a deeply corrupt relationship between RISC and Police in particular, the Proceeds of Corruption Unit ‘POCU’.  Operation Limonium would have severely damaged the Metropolitan Police reputation. This failure was deliberate and was done to protect the Police and maintain the Ibori investigation’’.