Air Peace CEO Indicted For Financial institution Fraud, Cash Laundering, Obstruction
Over time I’ve written extensively about Air Peace, which is Nigeria’s largest personal airline, having flown since 2013. The airline operates a fleet of round 30 plane, starting from regional jets to Boeing 777s, and even needs to fly to america.
The corporate’s 61-year-old CEO, Allen Ifechukwu Athan Onyema, has typically been praised as one in all Nigeria’s most good entrepreneurs and most beneficiant philanthropists. Nonetheless, in 2019, Onyema was indicted in america for financial institution fraud and cash laundering. Nicely, now he has one other indictment coming his approach, for obstruction of justice associated to the earlier investigation.
Air Peace CEO beforehand indicted for financial institution fraud & cash laundering
For some background, in November 2019, Onyema was indicted for financial institution fraud and cash laundering by the US Legal professional’s Workplace for the Northern District of Georgia. In accordance with the indictment, between 2010 and 2018, Onyema traveled steadily to Atlanta, the place he opened a number of private and enterprise financial institution accounts.
Greater than $44.9 million was transfered into his Atlanta-based financial institution accounts from international sources. Starting round Might 2016, he used a sequence of export letters of credit score to trigger banks to switch greater than $20 million into Atlanta-based financial institution accounts managed by him. The letters had been purportedly to fund the acquisition of 5 separate Boeing 737 passenger planes by Air Peace, and had been supported by buy agreements, payments of sale, and value determinations.
The paperwork purported to indicate that Air Peace was buying the plane from Springfield Aviation Firm LLC, a enterprise registered in Georgia. Nonetheless, the supporting paperwork had been allegedly faux — Springfield Aviation Firm LLC was owned by Onyema, and managed on his behalf by an individual with no connection to the aviation enterprise, and Springfield Aviation by no means owned the plane.
The corporate that allegedly drafted the value determinations didn’t exist. The Springfield Aviation supervisor was directed to signal and ship false paperwork to banks, and even use the supervisor’s identification to additional the fraud. After Onyema obtained the cash in america, he allegedly laundered over $16 million of the proceeds of the fraud by transferring it to different accounts.
Quick ahead to October 2024, as Onyema has now been indicted for obstruction of justice by the US Legal professional’s Workplace for the Northern District of Georgia. What occurred right here? In accordance with the indictment, in Might 2019, upon discovering that he was underneath investigation, Onyema directed the Springfield Aviation supervisor to signal a key enterprise contract, but in addition particularly instructed her to not date the doc.
In October 2019, Onyema allegedly brought about his attorneys to current that very same contract, now falsely dated as being signed on Might 5, 2016 (previous to the financial institution fraud that started in 2016), to the federal government in an effort to cease the investigation and unfreeze his financial institution accounts.
Backside lie
The CEO of Nigeria’s largest personal airline is dealing with fairly the fees in america. In 2019, he was indicted for financial institution fraud and cash laundering, and now he has been indicted for obstruction of justice.
This includes tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} that went by US financial institution accounts, reportedly to amass some Boeing 737s. Nonetheless, the “aviation firm” concerned didn’t even have something to do with plane, and was managed by the CEO as effectively. Then when he realized he was being investigated, he directed his individuals to falsify paperwork, to make it appear like he was doing nothing unsuitable.
One thing tells me that Air Peace gained’t be getting permission to fly to america anytime quickly…
What do you make of this Air Peace CEO indictment?
