OndoReporter | Nigeria court jails Russians, Japenese, 10 other foreigners for oil smuggling

OndoReporter | Nigeria court jails Russians, Japenese, 10 other foreigners for oil smuggling

A Nigerian court on Friday jailed 14 foreign
sailors from Russia, Ukraine, Philippine and
Japan between two and five years for unlawful
dealing in petroleum products in the country.

The federal high court in Lagos found the
suspects guilty of illegally transporting 1,738
tonnes of crude oil and some 4,500 tonnes of
petrol, also called gasoline, in their vessel MT
Anukpet Emerald.

Judge Ibrahim Buba sentenced 11 of the 14
foreigners to two years' jail or alternatively pay
a fine of two million naira (10,000 dollars)
each.

The remaining three -- all Russians -- were
given five years each in absentia without an
option of fine for jumping bail.
The court also ordered that the vessel and the
seized petroleum products be forfeited to the
Nigerian government.

The Nigerian navy arrested the sailors and the
vessel in February 2015 and handed the case
to the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission (EFCC) for prosecution.
It was not immediately clear if the products
onboard the vessel were to be taken out of
Nigeria and if so, to which country they were
headed.

Nigeria, Africa's biggest oil producer loses
billions of dollars each year from the theft of
crude from sabotaged pipelines and illegal
refining of oil products.

The oil is sold on the black market, depriving
the continent's most populous state of an
estimated $6 billion a year in lost revenue.
Convictions for oil smuggling are common but
in most cases the offenders get away with a
fine.