Neda Bernards Imasuen, the senator representing Edo South since 2023, was the mastermind of a sprawling bank heist in the United States before fleeing to Nigeria to pursue a successful career in politics, according to U.S. court filings reviewed by Peoples Gazette. 

As the head of the Nigerian Senate ethics committee, Mr Imasuen activated the disciplinary measure that led to the controversial suspension of Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, a senator from Kogi, for six months. The suspension has been widely rebuked as unconstitutional by leading legal voices, including Chidi Odinkalu, Abdul Mahmud and Femi Falana. 

Mr Imasuen, however, dismissed the criticism as unfounded, saying he acted dispassionately to protect the integrity of the Senate from Mrs Akpoti-Uduaghan’s salacious charges of sexual exploitation against Senate President Godswill Akpabio. Mr Akpabio also denied Mrs Akpoti-Uduaghan’s claims of a proposed tryst between the duo. 

But before he returned to Nigeria and landed a key spot at the nation’s highest law-making institution, Mr Imasuen led a legal career in New York that was marred by delinquency and sharp practices, documents showed. 

On March 9, The Gazette reported how the senator was disbarred for life in New York for taking money from a client without representing her. He also blew off subpoenas from disciplinary panels of the New York State court system. 

Fresh documents seen by The Gazette showed Mr Imasuen was named in a criminal court case as the facilitator of a vast fraud that bilked more than $25 million from a host of financial institutions across the U.S. 

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI, said Mr Imasuen was the lawyer “who arranged the transactions underlying the substantive bank fraud charges in the indictment,” according to a review of a case involving Mr Imasuen’s co-conspirator Imran Ismile Badoolah. 

The amount of fraudulent mortgage loans by Mr Imasuen and his co-conspirators exceeded $25 million, according to a federal grand jury indictment that came down on December 14, 2012. Prosecutors said Messrs Imasuen and Badoolah’s scheme targeted no fewer than 33 banks, including ABN Amro, Citi Bank, HSBC, Wells Fargo and Lehman Brothers. The fraud involved using straw buyers with good credit scores to secure loans after being financially induced, an act that violated federal law and intended to defraud the financial institutions that issued the loans.

Judge Kiyo Matsumoto of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Brooklyn identified Mr Imasuen as “an unindicted co-conspirator who executed allegedly fraudulent transactions,” which lasted between 2008 and 2009.

Judge Matsumoto sentenced Mr Badoolah on January 25, 2017, to 30 months in prison and placed him on probation for five years upon release. He was also ordered to pay restitution to the banks.

Despite repeatedly promising to send a detailed clarification since Sunday evening, Mr Imasuen failed to submit his response to The Gazette’s enquiry before this story was cleared to go live Tuesday morning.

The senator appeared to have escaped to Nigeria after the fraud was carried out. His public profile said he returned to Nigeria in 2010, about the same period he was unreachable for his grievance proceeding before he was disbarred, and as federal agents opened an investigation into the bank fraud.

He said he worked as a consultant and continued to practice law when he returned to Nigeria, running points for state governments on development projects with the World Bank and European Union. 

Mr Imasuen was admitted to the New York bar in 1992 with registration number 2498988. He appeared to be among about three dozen Labour politicians elected to the National Assembly on the coattails of Peter Obi during the 2023 populist surge that nearly swept a third party into power. 

It was unclear how Mr Imasuen continued to practice law in Nigeria despite his ignoble record in the U.S. A spokesman for the Supreme Court department that certifies lawyers across the Nigerian bar did not return a request seeking clarification.

Mr Imasuen’s unsavoury history updates the growing list of individuals with tainted pasts occupying high-ranking government positions in Nigeria.

The Gazette in 2023 exposed how former House of Representatives Speaker and President Bola Tinubu’s chief of staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, was disbarred by the State Bar of Georgia in the U.S. over his corruption and ethical lapses. He admitted to stealing $25,000 from a client before fleeing to Nigeria.