{"id":6163,"date":"2020-01-19T02:27:16","date_gmt":"2020-01-19T02:27:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/ng\/?p=6163"},"modified":"2020-01-19T02:27:16","modified_gmt":"2020-01-19T02:27:16","slug":"184-million-fake-loan-fraudsters-duped-nigerian-oil-producer-lekan-akinyanmi-owner-of-lekoil-company-600000-cash-clones-qatar-investment-authority-website-lekoil-shares-plunged-73-after-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/184-million-fake-loan-fraudsters-duped-nigerian-oil-producer-lekan-akinyanmi-owner-of-lekoil-company-600000-cash-clones-qatar-investment-authority-website-lekoil-shares-plunged-73-after-a\/","title":{"rendered":"$184 million FAKE LOAN: Fraudsters duped Nigerian oil producer, LEKAN AKINYANMI, owner of Lekoil company $600,000 cash…clones Qatar Investment Authority website * Lekoil shares plunged 73% after a trading halt in London Stock Exchange * ‘I am a victim of a complex fraud in order to masquerade as representatives of the QIA’-Lekan lament * Mark Simmonds, former minister in the U.K. Foreign Office during David Cameron as prime minister will lead the investigation alongside Tony Hawkins who is chief executive of another U.K.-listed oil firm, Columbus Energy BY ROBERT IDEMUDIA\/ECONOMY EDITOR, LONDON"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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$184\nmillion FAKE LOAN:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fraudsters\nduped Nigerian oil producer, LEKAN AKINYANMI, owner of Lekoil company\n<\/strong>$600,000\ncash<\/strong>…clones\n Qatar Investment Authority website <\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* Lekoil\nshares plunged 73% after a trading halt in London Stock Exchange<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

* ‘I am a \nvictim of a\ncomplex fraud in order to masquerade as representatives of the\nQIA’-Lekan lament <\/strong>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* Mark\nSimmonds, former minister in the U.K. Foreign Office during David\nCameron as prime minister will lead the investigation alongside Tony\nHawkins who is chief executive of another U.K.-listed oil firm,\nColumbus Energy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

BY\nROBERT IDEMUDIA\/ECONOMY EDITOR, LONDON<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A NIGERIAN\nOIL PRODUCER, LEKAN AKINYANMI, owner of Lekoil company in London is\nscreaming on top of the roof after he realized he had been duped a\nwhooping sum of <\/strong>$600,000\nby some unknown fraudsters who cloned the Qatar Investment Authority\nwhere he had earlier applied for loan and got deceived.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nNigerian oil producer duped into thinking it received $184 million\nloan from Qatar. A\nNigerian oil producer thought it had received a critical $184 million\nloan from a sovereign wealth fund to drill and develop an offshore\nfield. The\ncompany, Lekoil Ltd. LEK, +11.70%<\/strong><\/a>\ntold the London Stock Exchange on Jan. 2 it had received the loan\nfrom the Qatar Investment Authority. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nterms seemed favorable \u2014 an upfront fee of 2.75% and a 3.72% annual\npayment, arranged by a consultancy firm that specialized in African\ntransactions. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its\nCEO, Lekan Akinyanmi, pledged his full 39.1 million\u2013share stake to\nget the loan, so the company said it would cancel a $1.7 million loan\nit had previously made to him as well as grant an award of up to 30\nmillion shares depending on performance. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All\nwas well until Sunday, when, according to Lekoil, the Qatar\nInvestment Authority got on the phone to the company\u2019s advisers\nwith some bad news: It had no idea Lekoil was talking about.In\na new statement to the London Stock Exchange, Lekoil said it was the\nvictim of a \u201ccomplex fraud in order to masquerade as\nrepresentatives of the QIA.\u201d Lekoil\nshares plunged 73% on Tuesday after a trading halt Monday.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lekoil\nsaid it had performed due diligence, meeting with people it thought\nwere QIA representatives, and also carrying out legal and technical\ndue diligence. Lekoil also performed what it said was due diligence\non the consultancy firm, Seawave Invest Ltd., and sought legal\nadvice. An\nemail sent to an address on Seawave\u2019s website was not returned.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lekoil\nsaid it\u2019s out $600,000, though it\u2019s trying to recover the fees.\n\u201cWhilst Lekoil will take all reasonable actions to recover the fees\npaid to Seawave, there can be no guarantee that such attempts will be\nsuccessful,\u201d the company said. It\u2019s\nalso scrambling to get financing in place, and could be forced to\nsell its stake in an oil block off Lagos, Lekoil said. Optimum\nPetroleum Development is the operator of the field.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark\nSimmonds, who joined Lekoil last month and previously was a minister\nin the U.K. Foreign Office when David Cameron was prime minister,\nwill lead the investigation alongside Tony Hawkins, who is chief\nexecutive of another U.K.-listed oil firm, Columbus Energy.A\nspokeswoman for Lekoil said it wouldn\u2019t comment further due to the\ninvestigation. \n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

$184 million FAKE LOAN: Fraudsters duped Nigerian oil producer, LEKAN AKINYANMI, owner of Lekoil company $600,000 cash…clones Qatar Investment Authority website * Lekoil shares plunged 73% after a trading halt in London Stock Exchange * ‘I am a victim of a complex fraud in order to masquerade as representatives of the QIA’-Lekan lament * Mark […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6165,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}