The story of Emmanuel Nwude Odinigwe, the man who sold a fake airport to an international bank, is one of the biggest fraud cases in history. There have been scams throughout history, but selling an airport to an international customer without being there to verify the legitimacy of the transaction is pretty strange and crazy. Emmanuel Nwude Odinigwe, popularly known as Owelle of Abagana, committed one of the biggest frauds in the history of banking.His fraud is the third largest in the history of the global banking industry. Nwude is considered one of the most intelligent criminals in history.
The bank frauds that preceded Nwude’s exploits include Qusay Hussein’s looting of the Central Bank of Iraq and Nick Lesson’s trading losses at Barings Bank. Emmanuel Nwude was born in 1955 in eastern Nigeria. He comes from a humble background and was raised in the southeast of the country.
In a shocking tale of courage and deceit, a Nigerian bank manager hatched a cunning plan that led to the disappearance of a whopping £200 million from a major local bank. Emmanuel Nwude, former director of the Union Bank of Nigeria, is behind this bold move. His insidious plan surprised even the most experienced financial experts. Emmanuel Nwude’s foray into the world of high-stakes fraud required the use of his extensive knowledge of the financial world. He used his position and contacts to contact Nelson Sakaguchi, a leading figure at Brazil’s Banco Noroeste. Nwude cleverly pretended to be the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Paul Ogwuma. His goal? Obtain a huge sum of money by pretending that it will be used to finance a major airport project.
It’s hard to believe what happened next.In a single phone call between Nwude and Sakaguchi, almost 200 million pesos were decided. Surprisingly, the Brazilian banker, convinced by Nwude’s fabricated story, accepted this grand request without a doubt. But there was a problem: Nwude received a huge commission of £8 million in return for his help with the airport project, which would never remain more than a dream.
Between 1995 and 1998, the Brazilian bank lost large sums of money. Around £190 million ended up in the pockets of Nwude and his employees. While these bold trades were being made, Banco Noroeste was confronted with a shocking discovery. They were about to be taken over by major international bank Santander, and when they took a closer look at their spending, they discovered a worrying fact. Almost half of their money was stored in the Cayman Islands, a place notorious for tax evasion.
This discovery raised many questions within the Noroeste Bank, and he was fascinated by the strange path their money had taken. Legal action was taken and the extent of Nwude’s cunning fraud began to come to light. It turned out that Nwude had perpetrated a complex fraud, as a result of which Banco Noroeste withdrew a huge amount of money. To ensure that Nwude’s fraud had no impact on the bank’s impending takeover, the bank’s owners had to bear the financial burden. Unfortunately, despite good intentions, this led to the collapse of the Bank in 2001.
Justice finally reaches Nwude and his associates, even if it is slow. In 2004, they stood trial and bravely declared their innocence of numerous fraud charges. In a surprising turn of events, it was revealed that Nwude attempted to evade justice by attempting to bribe his confessed accomplice with the whopping sum of 60,000 naira. However, the bribery was firmly rejected, paving the way for a dramatic trial.