FORMER Delta State governor, Chief James Ibori, will have the luxury of breathing the air of freedom when he returns to the Southwark Crown Court at 10am on Monday morning.
Ibori, who is about five months into his nearly five-year jail term, will appear in Courtroom 5 for the confiscation of assets hearing at the South East Court as the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and his defence team finalise arrangement to confiscate the £50 million assets for which he received a 13-year jail term at the same court in April.
Ibori had requested to be present in court in May when the confiscation hearing was listed for mention, but the Judge, who jailed him, declined, saying it wasn’t necessary. Therefore, the former Peoples Democratic Party powerbroker will be looking forward to tomorrow, when he will be in the dock.
Two sources at the Crown Court confirmed to The Guardian on Friday that the former governor would be present for the hearing. “It’s in Court 5, at 10am and he’ll be coming,” one of the sources said, when asked if Ibori would be there with his legal team.
Asked in which prison the convicted governor would be coming from, another court staff said she had no idea, but that Ibori was presently not at Wandsworth Prison, where he spent the early days of his conviction.
“I don’t really know where he is, as the system has not been updated,” she responded.
And on who would be on Ibori’s defence team when State prosecutors make their case to strip him of his ill-gotten wealth on tomorrow, another female court staff said, “we don’t know who’s representing him, but the prosecutor is the CPS.”
Meanwhile, a very close friend of Ibori spoke from Lagos on Friday morning, revealing that Ibori had not been receiving many visits from his former colleagues in the corridors of power since being transferred away from the Wandsworth Prison.
The source said: “His friends used to visit him, but since he was moved from where he used to be, it’s been difficult” for them to visit.
Two former governors, one from the ruling PDP and another from one of the opposition parties, visited Ibori last Christmas while he was awaiting trial.
Judge Anthony Pitts jailed Ibori for 13 years in April after his defence team reached out to the CPS with a guilty plea bargain, some weeks before trial was scheduled to begin.
For not wasting court time and British taxpayers’ money, Pitts, had in jailing him, said: “Total sentence, which I impose on you, is 13 years. You are to serve half (six and a half years) of that. The 625 days (one year and 260 days), which you have spent in custody are to be credited to the amount of years to serve.”
Pitts revealed then that in giving Ibori “discounts” for his jail term, he factored in the fact that the accused pleaded guilty plea on February 27, rather than allowing the case to proceed to a 12-week jury trial.
In essence, Ibori will spend at least four years and nine months (and some days) before he is deported to Nigeria like other foreign criminals, who served term in any of Her Majesty’s Prisons (HMPs).
Although Ibori is to serve less than five years, tomorrow’s court appearance and hearing will determine whether he will be freed in a little over four years or be held for a longer period.
Everything depends on both him and his defence team. If they make the prosecutor’s job easy on Monday by readily giving all necessary information to get the stolen wealth confiscated, Ibori will be on the plane to Nigeria in around Christmas of 2016, but if the CPS smell anything contrary, Ibori will not be released until the CPS “gets every penny,” one detective told The Guardian in April.
