BNN BLOOMBERG
At a ceremony in November, the Nigerian government celebrated the discovery of as many as 1 billion barrels of oil in the country’s arid northeast, almost 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) away from the crude-rich Niger Delta.
The state’s partners in the multi-billion dollar project in the impoverished, landlocked corner of the country is a company founded by two brothers from India. The siblings have built the largest independent oil company in Africa’s biggest crude producing nation even as India pursues them as criminals — accusing them of perpetrating “one of the largest economic scams in the country.”
Now, as newly elected President Bola Tinubu sets ambitious targets for Nigeria’s hydrocarbons sector, companies created by the brothers, Nitin and Chetan Sandesara, seem poised for an increasingly prominent role — especially as international oil giants such Shell Plc and ExxonMobil Corp. retreat from the West African country.
“This discovery will provide a multiplicity of opportunity and great prosperity for Nigeria,” Tinubu said at the November event. Sworn in on May 29, he was the ruling party’s presidential candidate at the time.
The selection of a firm owned by the family of the duo branded as fugitives by India to drill wells for the project is just the latest sign of how Nigeria has provided the brothers a haven, effectively insulating them from troubles back home. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has accused the tycoons of absconding after defrauding public banks of more than $1.7 billion. Nigeria has refused India’s request to extradite them.
The Sandesara brothers, Gujarati businessmen who left India in 2017, deny cheating their lenders and say they are victims of political persecution. Having ventured into the Nigerian oil industry almost 20 years ago when they won two onshore licenses in the delta, the brothers — faced with problems in India — have shifted their focus to Lagos. They even applied for Nigerian citizenship, according to India’s Central Bureau of Investigation, or CBI, the country’s top investigating agency. It’s not clear if they succeeded. The brothers’ lawyer and Nigerian authorities didn’t respond to queries on the matter.
While the brothers fight fraud charges and non-bailable warrants from India, the Sandesara businesses are flourishing in Nigeria. The African nation refused to arrest them four years ago saying the Indian allegations “appeared to be political in nature,” according to a letter published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.
In India, the brothers’ private jet, swanky cars and star-studded parties at a 60,000-square-foot farmhouse in Ampad village in Gujarat, routinely provided fodder for tabloids and social media sites, according to news outlet The Print. From a sanctuary on Lagos’s upscale Victoria Island, one of their Nigerian companies has continued that glitzy tradition, sponsoring annual Diwali…
