A business dispute should be settled through negotiation or in court. In this recorded conversation about the Nigerian complaint against me, the other speaker describes something very different: paying the people handling a case to start it, paying them again to close it, and treating the process as “pressure tactics”.
He also repeatedly says that I am not a criminal. That is what makes this short recording worth watching.
What the recording is about
I ask whether the same people used to bring the case against me can also undo it. The other speaker says they can. I then ask how the authorities could first be told I was a criminal and later be asked to drop the case. He says this would not be a problem and describes the proceedings as a way of applying pressure.
Around 0:50, he discusses money being paid to initiate the case and further money being used to close it. Near the end, as I describe our falling-out and the wish to resolve it, he again says that I am not a criminal.
For me, this conversation illustrates how a commercial conflict was turned into a criminal matter. The recording is one part of my account; the separate court decisions and other documents belong to the wider record.
Full context and supporting documents
To understand the background, the arrest warrants, the Interpol notice and what followed, read Eight Years Ago, My Fight For Justice in Nigeria Began. That article brings together my account and the documents discussed in it.
Transcript of the recording
Source: YouTube’s automatically generated English captions. This is an unverified caption transcript, not a certified verbatim record. Caption wording, repetitions and apparent recognition errors are preserved below; punctuation and paragraph breaks have been added for readability. Unclear passages should be checked against the recording. Speaker identities are not assigned by the captions.
[0:00] So basically the same people that you used to push it against me now you can use them to undo it and they will do it.
[0:07] Yeah. [screaming] Yeah. Basically basically these guys are people right? They once you tell them that look and it should be they’ll drop it right. They are not ined. They’re not giving their money. Right.
[0:21] Okay. [laughter] Right. And they they they’re not going to have a problem that you first you they’re not going to have a problem that you told them, “Oh, this guy is a criminal and now you go to them and you say, I was kidding. He’s not a criminal. Drop the case.” They won’t have a problem with that. They will leave me alone.
[0:37] No, no, they don’t HAVE A PROBLEM. THEY DON’T HAVE A problem because we tell them that look, they all also know this tactic, right? They not they know we are. We did all this because of pressure tactics, right?
[0:50] So they also they GOT YOUR MONEY. THEY want money basically. So whichever way we pay them money to initiate the case, we get them money to close the case. They’re not interested in any any uh any other matter, you know, and you’re not you’re not the criminal who there after right,
[1:09] you know, you’re you’re just I mean we have to push this case. You can even get the best drivers. We have to push it, you know, because you’re not international criminal or terrorist who [laughter] stay
[1:23] and most importantly, you know, I’m not. We just have a we had a huge fallout, but now we want to finish it, right?
[1:29] You’re a criminal. You’re not You’re not a criminal. You’re not a criminal. I mean, come on. I didn’t, you know,
The book behind the story
My book, Chasing Black Unicorns: How Building the Amazon of Africa Put Me on Interpol’s Most Wanted List, tells the broader story of building businesses in Africa and the events that led to this fight.
Find Chasing Black Unicorns on Goodreads or listen to the English audiobook on Apple Books.
Facts are boring, but they tend to win.
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