Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti state recently made allegations laid against First Lady Aisha Buhari about her involvement in the Halliburton scandal involving former Congressman William Jefferson.
Following these allegations, The Herald has compiled a profile of William Jefferson.
Below is his profile:
William Jefferson is a former American politician from the U.S. state of Louisiana. He served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for nine terms from 1991 to 2009 as a member of the Democratic Party
Born 1947, Mr. Jefferson graduated from Harvard Law School. In 1990, after 11 years in the Louisiana State Senate, he became the first black person from Louisiana elected to Congress since Reconstruction, according to The Almanac of American Politics.
On November 13, 2009, Jefferson was sentenced to thirteen years in federal prison for bribery after a corruption investigation, the longest sentence ever handed down to a congressman for bribery or any other crime.
In a raid on Mr. Jefferson’s Washington-area home in August 2005, federal agents found $90,000 neatly wrapped in aluminum foil in a freezer. Prosecutors said the money was from Kentucky business interests and was supposed to be a bribe for a high Nigerian official, who later denied being part of any scheme.
Prosecutors said that while he might have sought millions of dollars in bribes, Mr. Jefferson might have actually received less than $400,000.
He was convicted on a 13 count charge bordering on money laundering, bribery, and corruption. Of those convictions there was hard evidence that he gave Atiku Abubakar the then Vice President of Nigeria $500,000 to be able to secure a contract for American company iGate LLC, who had bribed him with $400,000 to secure contracts in Nigeria and Ghana, given his connections in those countries exchange for 10% shareholding in the company.
Through secret FBI recordings, he estimated the company was going to make about $200 million a year after five years operations, giving him a $20million a year kickback from stocks in the company.
The jury concluded, after a six-week trial, that from 2000 to 2005 Mr. Jefferson sought hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from companies involved in oil, sugar, communications and other businesses, often for projects in Africa. In return, prosecutors said, he used his post on the House Ways and Means trade subcommittee to promote the companies’ ventures without disclosing his own financial interests in the deals.
The US. Attorney-General at a speech announcing his sentencing said “This ruling shows that America is a country of laws, that even a high ranking Congressman is not spared.”