Tinubu Hands Another $700 Million to Convicted Money Launderer Chagoury While His Son Sits on the Board

Since President Bola Tinubu took office, one man has quietly collected more than $12.7 billion in federal contracts. His name is Gilbert Chagoury. He is a Lebanese Nigerian billionaire with a criminal record for money laundering and illegal campaign donations in the United States. He is also one of the President’s longest standing allies. And he has just been awarded another mega project: a $700 million contract to renovate Lagos’s two main seaports, Tin Can and Apapa.

READ ALSO: Gilbert Chagoury: The Convicted Money Launderer Behind Tinubu’s Global Image and Domestic Ambitions

The contract went to ITB Nigeria, a subsidiary of the Chagoury Group. The decision was approved by the Federal Executive Council in early February, but according to an investigation by Africa Intelligence, President Tinubu had the final say. The publication noted that ITB Nigeria has no significant experience in port reconstruction, yet the President once again chose to place his trust in his confidant.

This is not an isolated case. In 2024, Tinubu awarded Chagoury’s Hitech Construction the $11 billion Lagos Calabar coastal highway project without competitive bidding. That decision sparked public outrage over lack of transparency, environmental concerns, and the staggering cost at a time of economic hardship. Now with the ports contract, critics say a clear pattern has emerged: the administration borrows money, awards contracts to friends of the President, and then those same friends show up again and again for the next deal.

The financing for the $700 million port renovation will come from a loan backed by Citibank Nigeria and UK Export Finance, with Afreximbank also expressing interest. But what has drawn even more attention is the role of Seyi Tinubu, the President’s son. Seyi sits on the board of CDK Integrated Industries, another subsidiary of the Chagoury Group. This arrangement means that while the President’s son serves on the board of a company owned by the man collecting billions in federal contracts, that same son goes on television to tell Nigerians that his father is not in office to enrich himself or his friends.

Seyi Tinubu recently said,

The only president that created an economy that has benefitted everybody, the only president that is not trying to enrich his own pocket.

But the repeated awarding of multibillion dollar contracts to a single businessman with a documented history of corruption tells a different story.

Gilbert Chagoury’s past is well documented. In 2000, he was convicted for money laundering linked to the late dictator Sani Abacha. In 2021, he and a partner paid $1.8 million in fines to the U.S. Department of Justice for making illegal campaign contributions to American politicians. He was once banned from entering the United States over allegations of corruption and terrorism financing. Yet in Nigeria, his influence has only grown under Tinubu.

He now brokered a meeting between the President and the boss of Dubai based DP World, a company the Chagoury Group is pushing to become a new port operator in Lagos. That meeting happened on February 26, with Chagoury and the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, who is a cousin of the President, both present.

For those watching the country’s infrastructure spending, the situation is increasingly difficult to ignore. The government is taking on debt, a convicted money launderer is executing the contracts, the President’s son sits on the businessman’s board, and that same son tells Nigerians that his father is fixing the cracks in the country. Many Nigerians are now asking: who is really benefitting from the billions being borrowed and spent.

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