Fraudster Of The Century: Meet Emmanuel Nwude, the Man Who Sold A Fake Airport for $242 Million
Emmanuel Nwude pulled off one of the largest banking frauds, and what shocked the world was that; he did this before the current internet banking system.
This is what happened.
In the year 1995, Nwude, who was the former director in one of Nigeria’s largest banks, along with some other people, exploited the knowledge of their local and international banking operations to pull off a big scam.
Of course, they had someone on the inside that helped them to achieve their plan. Nelson Sakaguchi, who was the Director of a Brazilian Bank known as Banco Noroeste, was also used as a pawn to achieve their plan.
Based on the fact that he has been a bank director and was regularly interacting with the Central Bank Governor, Nwude contacted Mr Sakaguchi about a new airport that Nigeria intended to build in it’s capital, Abuja.
Mr Sakaguchi was supposed to get $10illion as his commission if the deal pulls through. So Mr Sakaguchi quickly released a total of $191 million in cash and there was also an outstanding payment to be made for the financing of the proposed airport project, of an airport that doesn’t exist.
It will shock you to know that nobody discovered Nwude’s scam until the year 1997, when Spanish Banco Santander were conducting investigations because they wanted to take over Banco Noroeste. They held a joint board meeting and the representatives of the Spanish bank were wondering what half of the Brazilian bank’s capital was doing in an unmonitored account in Cayman Island.
Their investigation started from Brazil to the UK before it finally led them to Nigeria, and then to Switzerland and the United States. They finally uncovered the Fraud.
The military government in Nigeria at that time, didn’t pay much attention to fraud cases. But the return of the Democratic rule brought up the case again as the country was trying to restore it’s poor image in the international community. The government set up the EFCC in the year 2002 to specifically tackle this case and other financial crimes.
