The first woman president of OPEC and Nigeria\u2019s former oil minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, was cleared of bribery charges in a UK trial Wednesday, her defence lawyers said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDiezani Alison-Madueke was cleared of six charges of bribery at Southwark Crown Court on 17 June 2026, after a five-month trial,\u201d defence lawyer Jonathan Laidlaw said in a press release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The trial was brought by the UK\u2019s National Crime Agency (NCA), which targets serious organised and international crime, after a years-long investigation concerning alleged offences between 2011 and 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Laidlaw told the jury at the London court in January that there was a \u201cgross delay\u201d in the charges being brought, resulting in \u201ca great deal of material which would have established her innocence\u201d being denied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She had been accused of accepting \u201cfinancial or other advantages\u201d from individuals linked to two energy companies that had secured contracts with Nigeria\u2019s state-owned petroleum corporation when she was the country\u2019s oil minister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alison-Madueke had also been accused by prosecutors of enjoying a \u201clife of luxury\u201d funded by those interested in the lucrative oil and gas contracts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her lifestyle was described as involving chauffeur-driven cars, a private jet flight to Nigeria, and refurbishment work and staff costs at several London properties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her defence maintained that records proving her innocence had \u201cdisappeared\u201d and that she could no longer access papers at home in Nigeria as British police had retained her passport since her first arrest 11 years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The first woman president of OPEC and Nigeria\u2019s former oil minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, was cleared of bribery charges in a UK trial Wednesday, her defence lawyers said in a statement. \u201cDiezani Alison-Madueke was cleared of six charges of bribery at Southwark Crown Court on 17 June 2026, after a five-month trial,\u201d defence lawyer Jonathan Laidlaw<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":97262,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[154],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-judiciary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kobocompass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kobocompass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kobocompass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kobocompass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kobocompass.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=97261"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kobocompass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97263,"href":"https:\/\/kobocompass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97261\/revisions\/97263"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kobocompass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/97262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kobocompass.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=97261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kobocompass.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=97261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kobocompass.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=97261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}