The 37-year-old son of Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu acquired a London mansion that the country’s government – which his father helped bring to power – was trying to seize over an alleged $1.6 billion fraud.
Previously unreported corporate documents show that Oluwaseyi Tinubu owns an offshore company that paid Deutsche Bank about $10.8 million for the property in late 2017. The lender had taken over the house from Nigerian businessman Kolawole Aluko through a foreclosure.
There’s no suggestion that the leader was personally involved in the acquisition, yet it feeds into questions about the source of the Tinubu family’s wealth that were raised on the campaign trail ahead of February’s election.
Nigeria’s head of state and his representatives have said he made his fortune before going into politics by inheriting real estate, investing well, and working as an accountant and oil executive in the 1980s and early 1990s. In an interview with the BBC in the run-up to the vote, Tinubu cited Warren Buffett as an example he followed to become rich.
Tinubu has faced allegations of graft in the past, which he denies. In 1993, he forfeited $460,000 to resolve a lawsuit in Chicago after US federal authorities said that bank accounts in his name held the proceeds of heroin trafficking. His lawyers have said he was never charged over the matter.
When Oluwaseyi Tinubu’s company bought the real estate in 2017, the government of his father’s ally — President Muhammadu Buhari — was seeking to arrest Aluko, accusing him of going on the run while owing the country an oil-trading debt.
Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency was also attempting to confiscate the mansion as one of more than a dozen assets it suspected had been acquired by the businessman with the profits of crime.
Aluko denies all allegations of wrongdoing and says a court judgment earlier this year acquitting a former business partner has cleared his name.
The private three-floor residence in St. John’s Wood — a district favored by American bankers — is equipped with an eight-car driveway, two gardens, electric gates and a gym.
Centre for Nigeria Progress 