A London court on Tuesday sentenced an Egyptian man to 25 years in prison for smuggling people from North Africa to Italy.
Ahmed Ebid, who arrived in the U.K. in October 2022 after crossing the English Channel in a small boat, pleaded guilty at Southwark Crown Court to conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration.
Judge Adam Hiddleston said Ebid played a key role in an organized crime group and that his “primary motivation was to make money” from human trafficking.
Since his arrival in Britain and until June 2023, Ebid, 42, was implicated in at least seven separate boat crossings as part of a 12 million-pound ($16 million) operation that carried 3,781 people, including children, into Italian waters from North Africa.
Britain’s National Crime Agency cited some of those who had entered the U.K. illegally as saying that Ebid even told an associate to kill and throw into the sea anyone onboard caught with a mobile phone.
Ebid “preyed upon the desperation of migrants to ship them across the Mediterranean in death trap boats,” said Jacque Beer of the agency.
In one crossing, on Oct. 25, 2022, more than 640 people were rescued by the Italian authorities after they attempted to cross the Mediterranean Sea in a wooden boat, the agency said. The boat was taken into port in Sicily and two bodies were recovered.
“Vulnerable people were transported on long sea journeys in ill-equipped fishing vessels completely unsuitable for carrying the large number of passengers,” said Tim Burton, specialist prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service.
“His repeated involvement in helping to facilitate these dangerous crossings showed a complete disregard for the safety of thousands of people, whose lives were put at serious risk,” Burton added about Ebid.
BLANTYRE-(MaraviPost)-It never rains but pours for former Malawi President Joyce Banda (JB) on bribery scandal after Baker Tilly report.
It has been revealed that JB while serving as the country’s first and only female president in 2012 signed an executive order to acquire fuel supply which led to serious oil fraud and now a United Kingdom (UK) court has ordered a British firm to pay Malawi MK600 million fine over bribery, fraud and corruption over a 2012 fraudulent oil transaction.
The Malawi erstwhile Head of State, Joyce Banda, who assumed office while serving as vice president in 2012 after the Republican president Bingu wa Mutharika suddenly died, signed the executive order soon after she took over reigns of power authorising the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation of Abuja to supply 45,000 barrels of oil per day as prescribed by the laws of the Federal Government of Nigeria.
At that time, Malawi faced an acute fuel supply crisis in 2012 after development partners chickened out on former president Bingu wa Mutharika because of what they described as “excessive executive arrogance”.
Late Bingu Wa Mutharika: was honored posthumously
This was a direct result of Bingu wa Mutharika’s despotic decision to expel British High Commissioner to Lilongwe Fergus Cochrane-Dyet, a year earlier, in April 2011, after he criticised his leadership as autocratic and dictatorial in a leaked diplomatic cable.
Cochrane-Dyet was given a formal letter of expulsion and was declared made persona non-grata, a development the European Union Delegation to Malawi bemoaned.
One of the consequences of the Malawi Government’s decision was a fuel shortage crisis of unprecedented levels.
Under panic, former Malawi leader Banda, in a quest to find solutions to the fuel crisis signed an executive order which opened up massive graft and bribery between a UK based mining and commodity company and very senior Malawi government officials.
This multi-million oil corruption debacle is not the only is not the only financial scandal during her two-year presidency, there was also a massive industrial scale looting under her watch called cashgate scandal in which billions of kwacha’s were embezzled from the public coffers.
Exactly 10 years later, UK’s court, Southwark Crown Court has ordered the FTSE 100-listed Glencore company, one of the largest mining and commodity trading companies in the Europe, to pay the Malawi Government MK600 million over the 2012 fraudulent oil transaction between the and the Joyce Banda administration.
Passing judgment, Judge Peter Fraser ordered the company to pay the money after it pleaded guilty to bribery offences in June this year after Serious Fraud Office (SFO) – the UK government crime agency that is in charge of investigating and prosecuting of serious and complex bribery, fraud and graft cases – pressed the charges against Glencore.
According to the court judgment documents the MK600 million fine that has been ordered to be paid to Malawi government is part of the £281 million (over MK4 billion) fine the company has been ordered to pay in seven bribery cases pertaining to its oil business in Africa.
In his ruling, judge Fraser noted that what the UK company did amounts to corporate corruption on a widespread scale; in this case, after it deployed substantial sums of money in bribes.
“Corruption was deep-seated in the African oil trading operation of Glencore Energy UK Limited, wholly owned by FTSE 100-listed Glencore. Corruption attracts unprecedented penalty, fines, confiscation of profit,” reads the judgement, made on November 3, 2022.
During the trial, The court learnt through the SFO that Glencore’s staff and middlemen gave kickbacks to the tune of £27 million to officials in Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, South Sudan and Equatorial Guinea and Malawi.
According to facts of the case, a firm called Petroleos de Geneva S.A Limited was contacted by the Joyce Banda led Government to administer a government-to-government crude oil deal for two years between Malawi and Nigerian Petroleum Corporation (NPC) in 2012.
The SFO told the court that the company, Petroleos de Geneva S.A Limited entered into the contract with the UK film, but without any discount.
Glencore undertook to sell the oil and pass 60 percent of profits to Nigerian companies, something the court described as corporate corruption.
In his determination, the judge further determined that such corruption took place for an extended duration across five separate countries in West Africa as well as in South Eastern Africa.
During the court hearing, the SFO informed the court that employees of Glencore moved bribes to the five countries by way of private jets, using false documents to conceal the real purposes of the money.
However, Clare Montgomery, defending and representing Glencore, expressed regret for the damage caused to the African countries including Malawi.
Montgomery said: “The company regrets the harm caused by these offences and recognises the harm caused, both at national and public levels in the African states concerned, as well as the damage caused to others.”
Ironically, the problem of fuel shortage is back, a development the Malawi Energy Regulatory Authority (MERA) is laying a blame on forex shortage in the country.
Malawi’s government is heavily dependent on foreign aid, with donor funding normally accounting for more than 40 percent of official receipts.
Former Malawi leader JB is yet to clear her name as is busy on global trotting.
She ruled Malawi for two years, 2012-2014 after the death of Bingu Wa Mutharika.
JB through her Peoples Party (PP) failed to win Malawians trust during the 2014 polls.
Joyce Banda’s PP is currently part of Chakwera’s Tonse Alliance government.
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