The Zamfara State governor, Abudal’aziz Abubakar Yari who was alleged to have bought a luxury property in the United States is far from getting his neck out of the noose as report has exposed the alleged propery purchased by the state governor for the sum of $950,000.
According to report, the state governor purchased the luxury property two years after assuming office as the state governor. The luxury property is said to be seated on 2.1-acre of land and located at 14800 Bowie Farm Court, Bowie Maryland (Zip code: MD 20721). The property, according to report has six full and two half bathrooms with a jacuzzi in the master bedroom.
SaharaReporters revealed the deed documents obtained from the Circuit Court of Prince George’s County, Maryland, USA which denotes that the state governor is the sole owner of the luxury property which was purchased from a limited liability company, K Hovanian Hamptons, located at Creek 11, Delaware.
According to the documents obtained, the Zamfara state governor, Yari, purchased the property on August 27, 2012, while the approval of the purchase was granted on 1 November 2012 after Yari paid the princely sum of $950,000 cash.
The deed further recorded a sum of $5,225, described as “recordation of tax paid” and another $13,300 described as “transfer tax paid”. The news source further reported that investigations into the payments offers a proof that Yari owns and operated a foreign account which comes as a clear breach to the Code 3 of the Code of Conduct Bureau.
An another document obtained by news source, Governor Yari was reported to have paid taxes on the property up till date as his 2017 estate tax was pegged at $16,583.10.
SaharaReporters wrote: “Mr. Yari bought the property after his fraudulently awarded N25billion in road contracts in Zamfara in 2012.
The code of conduct law expressly prohibits certain public officials from operating bank accounts in any country outside Nigeria. These include the President, Vice President, governor, deputy governor, ministers, commissioners, members of the National Assembly and the Houses of Assembly of the States.
According to the deed document, Mr. Yari signed the agreement in person, with Kimberley Armstead a notary public of Montgomery County State of Maryland, serving as a witness.
In May, this website exclusively reported that Mr. Yari, Chairman of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, is building a 100-room hotel in Lekki, Lagos, with the $3million he stole from the Paris Club loan refund to states. Aside from the $3million, Mr. Yari was also found to have diverted the sum of N500million from the Paris Club refund to pay off a loan. He was said to have withdrawn N500million from the N19billion Paris Club refund illegally paid into the account of Nigerian Governors’ Forum as payment to “consultants”. He deposited the stolen sum into a bank account with a mortgage bank from which he had taken an N800million loan to buy properties in 2013. This move, SaharaReporters learned, enabled him to renegotiate his debt from N800million to N500million.
Mr. Yari is thought to have trousered the sum of N2.2billion from the sum illegally diverted into the Nigerian Governors’ Forum Account by the Federal Ministry of Finance. The Senate President, Mr. Bukola Saraki, and his cronies also benefited to the tune of N3.5billion from illegal diversion, which is being investigated by the EFCC. Officials of the anti-graft agency told SaharaReporters in May that Mr. Yari’s hotel, which is under construction, has been listed as a proceed of crime and will be taken over once the EFCC obtains a court order.
Mr. Yari has denied ownership of any hotel in Lagos, claiming he does not even own a plot in the Nigeria’s commercial capital.
In 2017 over 1000 persons died as a result of a meningitis epidemic with Mr. Yari’s Zamfara leading in the number of deaths. At the peak of the epidemic, Yari reportedly said the epidemic was the punishment from God against his people for their sins.”
