Longest serving judge ran offshore business, acquired property worth millions while serving—Pandora Papers

Former President of the Delta State Customary Court of Appeal, Justice Stella Ogene, has been outted in the on-going revelations by Pandora Papers, a multi-million-file leak the Premium Times has been publishing.

Ogene owns a London property she acquired through an offshore company while she was in service, a breach of public service code in Nigeria, especially Section Six (6) of the Code of Conduct Bureau and Tribunal Act.

In some sort of irony, Ogene was honored for being the longest-serving head of customary court in Nigeria.

According to the report, Cook Worldwide, a financial secrecy seller with an office in Panama, a notorious tax haven, handled the incorporation thanks to Chike Obianaba, a British-Nigerian London property consultant, who acted as the go-between.

According to the document, Cook Worldwide incorporated Assete Media Limited on September 7, 2009, with Mrs Ogene its beneficial owner, director, and secretary.

Cook Worldwide hired Mayfair Trust Group Limited, a Mahe-Seychelles-based offshore service provider, in helping Mrs Ogene to incorporate Assete Media Limited in Seychelles, the documents further revealed.

Ogene when initially denied her link with the shell company when the Premium Times confronted her with evidence.

“I am not a sole director or any director for that matter and I am just a nominal shareholder of Assete Media. In relation to the records of the letter you referred to written by me, it is outdated and obsolete and there are documents to that effect.”

Not long after is incorporation, Assete Media Limited acquired a he London property with the title MX58142 and address: 2 Old Rectory Gardens, Edgware HA8 7LS, UK Land Registry records show.

The price paid was 224,000 pounds (about N43 million at the prevailing exchange rate).

But Ogene said Assete Media took a loan to acquire the London property. She mentioned no bank.

She has all along been vilating the Code of Conduct Act—by not declaring the property in her assets declaration form, and for engaging in another for-profit venture. Besides Assete Media, Ogne served 10 years as director Yellow Music while she was in service.

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Ogene, her husband John, daughter Esse, and so John Ogene, registered in 2010, with registration number 882084 in Nigeria, according to the CAC records.

The records show her husband is a professor of arts history and graphics and deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Benin. He, too, breached the law.

The retired judge however told the newspaper, “The company (Yellow Music Limited) the company was set up for future use at that time which was never in use and had no financial dealings whatsoever.”

“It was initially set up as a possible future venture into musical recordings for our son John Ogene Jr who is quite interested in music.”

She did not respond to further questions on whether she declared her interest in Yellow Music.