The Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Air Peace and Nigeria’s largest Airline, Mr Allen Onyema has been charged by the United States Authorities for allegedly laundering over $20million
According to reports, Mr Allen Onyema who a few weeks back and on his own free will, helped repatriated some stranded Nigerians in South Africa after the last Xenophobic attack back to Nigeria, is alleged to have illegally transferred “more than $20 million from Nigeria though United States bank accounts in a scheme involving false documents based on the purchase of airplanes,” according to a statement by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The company’s chief of administration and finance, Ejiroghene Eghagha, was charged with bank fraud and identity theft in the same case, the statement said.
Bloomberg reports that the U.S Justice Department in their statement alleged that Mr Allen Onyema used export letters of credit that were supposedly to fund the purchase of five Boeing 737 passenger planes by Air Peace to get banks to transfer the money.
Supporting documents from a U.S. registered company owned by Onyema “were fake,” it said.
He then allegedly laundered over $16 million of the proceeds by transferring it to other accounts, the Department of Justice said.
More than $3 million of the transferred funds allegedly came from accounts of organizations set up by Mr Allen Onyema to promote peace across Nigeria, according to the statement.
Onyema and Eghagha deny all the charges and will “vigorously defend” themselves, according to a statement prepared by their lawyers, A.O. Alegeh & Co. “The allegations are unfounded and strange,” Bloomberg had reported.
The Air Peace boss “looks forward to an opportunity to rebut these allegations in court,” the statement said.
Onyema founded Air Peace in 2013 and the carrier now offers numerous domestic routes in Nigeria as well as flights to other West African destinations and Dubai.
“Onyema’s status as a wealthy businessman turned out to be a fraud. He corrupted the U.S. banking system, but his trail of deceit and trickery came to a skidding halt,” Drug Enforcement Agency Special Agent Robert J. Murphy said in the DOJ statement.