Before Ike Ekweremadu’s organ trafficking case became public, Mathew Page, a Nigerian expert at the US State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, reportedly alerted the UK’s national crime agency (NCA) to the former Senate President’s activities.
Recall that on May 5th, an Old Bailey court
sentenced Ekweremadu to nine years and eight months in prison, while his wife,
Beatrice, received a sentence of four years and six months for the same
offense. The two were found guilty of attempting to persuade medical
professionals at the Royal Free hospital to perform an £80,000 kidney
transplant on the donor, who was represented as their daughter Sonia’s cousin.
According to the UK Guardian, Page, an
associate fellow at Chatham House, alerted UK authorities to investigate
Ekweremadu’s illicit affairs before he was imprisoned.
Page claimed that if the authorities had
acted quickly on his warnings about Ekweremadu, the UK could have avoided the
historical case of organ trafficking.
Page, in collaboration with the UK’s
Department for International Development, investigated how Nigerian
politicians, including Ekweremadu, used unexplained wealth to purchase properties
in the UK worth millions of pounds.
He also looked into how such politicians used
funds amassed over time to fund expensive private education for their children.
The report said:
He found that in a 12-year period, Ekweremadu
would have made about £339,000 as a political office holder, including his
stint as deputy president of the Nigerian senate.
But in that period, he bought three
properties – two in London and one in Cambridge – worth £4.2m. The Old Bailey
heard that Ekweremadu had an international property portfolio worth more than
£6m.
Page supplied the NCA with a dossier of
information about how Ekweremadu had used unexplained wealth to fund his UK
activities.
Despite the warnings and financial red flags
raised in the dossier, Ekweremadu’s organ trafficking plot went undetected
until a young street trader from Lagos whom he had brought over fled to Staines
police station in Surrey in May 2022 in fear for his life.
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