PIDG operates around the world, in countries including Ivory Coast, the Democratic of Congo and Sierra Leone. “Concerns were raised with us about the complex corporate structures that PIDG’s partners have sometimes established, making it difficult to be certain about the ownership of companies and creating a risk that those involved may have criminal connections,” she said. Margaret Hodge, the chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, said that DFID’s oversight of the group had left it open to questions about the integrity of PIDG’s investments and some of the companies it partnered. The judge in his case said that the £50million figure could be “ludicrously low”, and that the amount pocketed by the former governor of Nigeria’s Delta state was “unquantified”. Ibori was jailed in 2012 for 13 years after admitting fraud of nearly £50million.
PIDG’s Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund also put almost £19 million into a power plant in the Ivory Coast, where a fellow investor was allegedly a notorious fraudster called James Ibori. “Seven Energy was named by the former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria in a 2014 investigation he conducted into the allegations of looting of Nigerian oil revenues,” noted the MPs. In one case, PIDG’s Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund invested almost £20million in a project designed to support the gas processing and distribution activities of Seven Energy, a Nigerian energy company.
However the report by the influential committee of MPs criticised the department’s management of the agency, saying DFID’s oversight of the group has been “unacceptably poor”. The UK government will have given PIDG £700million over the three years leading up to this March, meaning Britain has given around 70 per cent of the group’s income since it was set up.
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