Posted by 9jabook.com on December 8, 2009 at 3:30am
More Nigerian Billionaires coming out of the Woodwork .Who is BURUJI KASHAMU ? another PDP Financier (APF) rears his head We hope for Good not Bad .So far Good with his intervention in Ogun Politics for peace and his infamous War with the American Government !
READ ON !
4 Years in Custody + 5 Years in Exile = Nearly a Decade of Injustice
Buruji Kashamu’s Saga of Mistaken Identity, Double Jeopardy, and Unfair Imprisonment
Buruji Kashamu is reckoned to be amongst the top 20 most successful Yoruba businessmen in Nigeria. For the past 10 years, he has struggled to clear his name and end an exile imposed by the United States Department of Justice. Mr. Kashamu,has twice been cleared by British courts, but continues to face the threat of an obsolete case.
At the time of his in tial arrest, he was the Chief Executive Officer of many companies in West Africa including one of the largest cotton ginneries in West Africa located in the Republic of Benin, and in which the government of that country had significant investments. He was arrested at City Airport London in 1998 after voluntarily informing customs officials that he was carrying currency in excess of 10,000 pounds sterling and the warrant for his arrest was discovered.
Mr. Kashamu was held in a British jail and the United States began extradition proceedings. Mr. Kashamu asserted, and still maintains, that attempts to prosecute him are based purely on mistaken identity. The British court agreed and found that the United States had failed to disclose evidence favorable to Mr. Kashamu. One of the cooperating conspirators, the leader of the gang in the US, had positively rejected an identification of him from an arrest photo, supporting his claim of innocence. The court ordered his release and quashed the extradition order. He was released and rearrested on the same warrant outside the court. A fresh extradition request was filed which would then proceed to a rigorous trial over a period of three years.
A British court again found that Mr. Kashamu was not the person referred to by certain defendants in the matter. The British court conducted extensive hearings. Two of the top officers of the Nigerian anti-narcotics agency, the Director of Investigations and the Director of Prosecutions, testified orally in the court proceedings. Top officers of Interpol from Republic of Benin and Togo also gave oral testimony .They testified that Mr. Kashamu was a successful businessman who was not at all implicated in any drug dealing but had cooperated with their respective governments in many areas of security and intelligence in the past.
The British court concluded, after consideration of all the evidence, that Mr. Kashamu’s brother, who bears a striking resemblance to Mr. Kashamu, and was a heroin dealer in Nigeria and Benin, was the individual sought by the government.
Since his release in 2003 from British Detention he has continued his businesses in Nigeria and Republic De Benin and has managed to revive his fortunes.
Kasmal Group with Kasmal Investment,Transport,Properties,Services,Nacoil, Asuza Construction are now forces to be reckoned within billionaire circles in Nigeria
Although U.S authorities have not tried for his extradition since being so roundly defeated in the British Courts in 2003, they have kept the discredited charges against him pending. This is the reason Mr. Kashamu’s lawyers have commenced an action in the US District Court in Chicago to have the charges dismissed.
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