Madrid (Spain) - The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) working with the Spanish police, have arrested 87 Nigerians suspected of Advanced Fee Fraud aka 419.

The 419 suspects were accused of defrauding at least 1,500 people in a postal and internet lottery scam. The Spanish police said millions of euros were taken from the victims, most of them in the United States and European Union.

Those targeted were wrongly told they had won a lottery and asked to send a payment before prize money could sent.

Thousands of letters and e-mails, most in ungrammatical English, were sent out to prospective victims every day, police said.

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Abuja - Nigeria’s Minister of Health, Professor Adenike Grange, and her Minister of State, Mr. Gabriel Aduku, an architect, have resigned on the strength of the allegations of corruption in the ministry.

The ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Professor Simon Ogamdi; the Director of Administration, Dr. H. B. Oyedepo; the Director of Finance, Hanafi Muhammed, and 11 other officials have also been sent on suspension pending further disciplinary action against them.

In the meantime, President Umaru Yar’Adua has accepted the supposed voluntary resignations of the Minister of Health, Professor Adenike Grange, and the Minister of State (Health), Arc. Gabriel Aduku.

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Abuja - The Chairman of the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu (AIG) has been relieved of his position. Ribadu will proceed on a “mandatory” one year course at the National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), even though his tenure as the commission’s Chairman was recently extended by the government of former president, Olusegun Obasanjo.

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ThisDay (Lagos) - The daughter of former president Olusegun Obasanjo (OBJ) and sitting Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Senator Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello, has been linked to a fradulent N3.5 billion contract in the power sector, while her father, President Obasanjo, was still at the helm of the nation’s affairs.

The matter, presently at the International Court of Arbitration  in Paris, France, involves an Austrian company, M. Schneider, which has petitioned the Presidency, ICPC, Code of Conduct Bureau, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Ethics, and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) over what it called the “fraudulent, corrupt and criminal nature involving Senator (Mrs) Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello (alias Mrs Damilola Akinlawon), then serving as a Commissioner with the Ogun State Government”.

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Abuja - The Minister of Finance, Dr. Shamsudeen Usman, has been instructed by the Upper legislative body, the Senate, to recover over N300 billion from his fellow Ministers, currently held in secret bank accounts.

The recovered “loot” according to the dismayed legislators must be added to the 2008 budget presented by President Musa Yar’Adua. The legislators were surprised that such funds were not captured in the 2007 budget ‘because they were buried in private bank accounts to yield interest for them [Ministers]’.

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