By Kevin Akor
LAGOS, Nigeria (chatnewstv.com) — A former Nigerian pension reform official convicted of laundering public funds bought multiple properties in the United States and the United Arab Emirates while overseeing retirement savings for millions of Nigerians, according to an investigation by international journalists.
Abdulrasheed Maina, once chairman of Nigeria’s Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms, purchased three homes in the U.S. and a hotel apartment in Dubai during and shortly after the period in which a court later found he was laundering pension funds, reporters found.
Maina was convicted in 2021 of money laundering and sentenced to up to eight years in prison. He was released early in February 2025 and continues to deny wrongdoing.
Authorities seized at least 20 properties in Nigeria after his conviction and ordered him to repay 2.1 billion naira, about $5 million at the time. But journalists reviewing property records discovered four additional properties abroad that were not publicly listed among the seized assets.
Property records obtained by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, Premium Times and the Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa show that Maina bought the three U.S. properties in Kentucky outright, without mortgages, while he was still in office. He later bought a two-bedroom hotel apartment in Dubai for nearly $670,000.
“All three U.S. properties were purchased cash in hand,” the records show, during the same period prosecutors said Maina was diverting public funds.
Reached by phone, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission spokesperson Dele Oyewale declined to comment on the specific findings but said foreign assets could still be investigated.
“If we have the information in that regard, we would want to pursue it,” Oyewale said.
Maina did not respond to requests for comment. “He is not interested,” his media assistant told OCCRP.
Maina’s case has long been one of Nigeria’s most prominent corruption scandals. Prosecutors allege that between 2010 and 2013, he used sham biometric enrollment contracts and forged documents to siphon pension funds, including at least 700 million naira, about $4.5 million at the time, in a separate ongoing case.
During sentencing in the money laundering trial, Federal High Court Judge Okon Abang noted the disparity between Maina’s income and the funds he was accused of receiving.
“The convict’s salary as a civil servant was a little above N300,000, and could not have amounted to N2 billion even if he was saving all his salaries for 35 years,” the judge said.
Records show Maina bought his first U.S. home in Frankfort, Kentucky, in August 2010 for $215,000. Two more properties were purchased in 2011 through his U.S. company, VIU Investment LLC, for a combined $415,000. Ownership of those homes was later transferred to a trust he established for his children.
A hotel apartment he purchased in Dubai in June 2013, about three months after he was removed from office, is now held by his daughter.
Maina fled Nigeria in 2013 as investigations closed in, later returning amid public outrage in 2017 after it emerged he had been secretly reinstated into government despite being wanted by authorities. He was arrested in 2019, convicted in 2021 and briefly fled again before being extradited back to Nigeria.
Although released early for what prison officials described as “good conduct,” Maina’s legal troubles persist. His money laundering conviction still stands, and a separate criminal case is ongoing.
Last week, renewed scrutiny followed a ceremony in which a local branch of the Nigerian Bar Association named Maina a patron and presented him with a “Rule of Law and Courage Award.” The national association swiftly condemned the event and announced disciplinary action against the lawyer involved.
Maina again insisted on his innocence. But for many Nigerians, the discovery of foreign properties has revived questions about how far efforts to recover stolen public funds have truly gone.
