Convicted Nigerian drug baron in more trouble in the UK

Authors:

isaac dachen

September 28, 2017 1:29 PM

A Nigerian drug baron serving a 15-year jail term in the UK will have another 7 years added to his time if he fails to remit £1.2 million to the government.

A Nigerian drug baron who was sentenced to 15 years in prison by a court in the United Kingdom, will have another seven years added to his sentence if he refuses to hand over the sum of £1.2 million to the government.

Mail Online reports that the suspect, Patrick Udensi was nabbed with parcels of cocaine and cannabis with street value of £1.8 million, estimated to be over N500 million which he had illegally smuggled into the UK and sentenced after the celebrated case but now, the UK government has ordered him to hand over the money or get more years added to his sentence.

During a review of his case, a judge ordered the 36-year-old Udensi who lived in North London at the time of his arrest, to pay the sum after the National Crime Agency [NCA] officers discovered he had valuable assets in Nigeria.

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If he fails to pay cash equal to the value of his Nigerian assets which the NCA successfully argued in court were the benefit of a criminal lifestyle, he will have seven years and six months added to his sentence and will still owe the money when he comes out.

The convict was said to have laundered the proceeds of his crimes by buying car parts in the UK and shipping them to Nigeria where they were sold on the open market on his behalf.

Udensi was convicted in 2015 following an NCA investigation while an accomplice, John Arinze Nwosu from Edgbaston, Birmingham, absconded before trial and was sentenced to five years in prison in absentia.

Senior Investigating Officer for the NCA’s Heathrow border investigation team, Ian Truby, said:

“NCA officers will not let criminals serve their time and then fund luxury lifestyles with cash they made by exploiting people.

We have worked hard in this case and others to find out how an offender has stored their criminal wealth so the courts can take it back from them.

If Udensi pays up, then he’ll get out of prison at the time he expected to. If not, it’s seven more years and the same bill at the end. It’s his choice.”

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During the investigations, NCA border investigators found telephone and email evidence that Udensi headed up a group involved in at least 77 different parcel importations of cocaine and cannabis using 14 different destination addresses across north London.

Udensi was said to use Skype, Yahoo Messenger, iMessage and WhatsApp to communicate with drug distributors in Africa, Asia, and South America.

Authors:

isaac dachen