International commercial law expert Dr Gbenga Oduntan has been awarded $50,000 from the MacArthur Foundation for a project to run two training workshops in Nigeria on tracing funds transferred as a result of corrupt practices.
The workshops will offer practical strategies on identifying suspect companies and properties as well as whistle blowing techniques. They are expected to be of interest to a broad range of Nigerian government officials, leading journalists, human rights activists, anti-corruption researchers, lawyers, academics, students, NGOs, and the Nigerian Police.
Led by international academics from Europe and Nigeria, the workshops will address aspects of Nigerian, UK, US and international law on how to research companies and property ownership; using public sources of information; finding shell companies and their investments; and tracing invested funds of former military dictators, former governors and current Politically Exposed Persons.
Dr Oduntan was invited to bid for the grant, administered jointly by the MacArthur Foundation and the Institute of International Education, after running a successful one-day training conference at Kent Law School in July. The conference, entitled ‘Tracking faulty towers’, offered an introduction into strategies and techniques for tracing ownership of companies and properties bought from the proceeds of bribery and corruption in the UK.
Dr Oduntan says the workshops, to be held in Abuja and Lagos, are timely: ‘Nigeria expects hundreds of millions of pounds of its monies invested in properties and laundered through financial institutions in the UK by Nigerian officials to be returned to the country.’
Dr Oduntan has research interests in public and private international law particularly international courts and tribunals; arbitration; international commercial law, anti-corruption law, international economic law and oil and gas law. He is a recognized expert in sovereignty and boundary issues, as well as in air and space law. He is the author of several books including International Law and Boundary Disputes in Africa (Routledge, 2015) and Sovereignty and Jurisdiction in Airspace and Outer Space (Routledge, 2012). He is also a member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and of the Nigerian Bar Association (Barrister and Solicitor).