A United Kingdom Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal by former Delta State Governor, James Ibori, seeking to reduce a £101.5m asset confiscation order imposed on him over proceeds of crime.
The court, in a judgment delivered on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, rejected Ibori’s argument that adjusting the value of money held in frozen bank accounts to reflect inflation amounted to a disproportionate interference with his property rights.
Ibori had sought to reduce the confiscation order by approximately £4.3m, from £101.5m to about £97.2m, challenging the application of the inflation adjustment to certain bank accounts linked to the proceeds of his criminal activities.
However, a three-member panel of the Court of Appeal, comprising Lord Justice Andrew Popplewell, Mr Justice Simon Bryan and Judge Nicholas Dean, upheld the original order.
The judges held that there was nothing disproportionate about applying the change-in-value-of-money adjustment to assets under a restraint order, even where their value had not increased at the same rate as inflation.
“There is nothing disproportionate in applying the CVM uplift to assets subject to a restraint order merely because they have not increased in value by as much as the CVM, or at all, when restrained,” the court ruled.
CVM, which stands for change in value of money, is an inflation-related adjustment applied to criminal proceeds to ensure that confiscation orders reflect their present-day monetary value.
Ibori’s lawyers had argued that applying the adjustment to funds in frozen accounts was unfair because he could not access or invest the money to generate additional returns after the accounts were restrained.
They maintained that requiring him to pay the adjusted amount would amount to an excessive interference with his property rights under the European Convention on Human Rights.
The court, however, rejected the argument, stating that the adjustment was part of the statutory framework for determining the value of criminal proceeds when obtained and ensuring that confiscation orders reflected their current monetary worth.
The judges also attributed the prolonged confiscation proceedings to Ibori’s resistance to the process, noting that the restraint order resulted from his criminal conduct and the risk of assets being dissipated.
“The very lengthy delay in this case was entirely Mr Ibori’s fault in his persistent resistance to the making of the order,” the judges said.
They added that the effect of the restraint order on the Nigerian bank accounts could have been avoided if he had acknowledged that the funds were criminal proceeds and agreed to transfer them to the Crown at the beginning of the proceedings.
The court further held that his obligation to repay the criminal proceeds could be met from other available assets, irrespective of whether they were directly linked to the offences.
“For these reasons, Mr Ibori’s appeal is dismissed,” the court concluded.
The appeal centred on two categories of assets identified during the confiscation proceedings.
The first involved four Nigerian bank accounts, while the second concerned seven accounts held by investment companies in Liechtenstein, Hong Kong, Austria and Nigeria, containing approximately £12.49m.
Ibori’s legal team argued that the inflation adjustment applied to the accounts was unjustified because the funds had been restrained and could not generate additional returns.
However, the court found that the seven investment company accounts did not form part of the criminal benefits used to calculate the confiscation order.
Instead, the relevant funds were traced to three Access Bank accounts in Nigeria into which money was paid in 2006.
The judges consequently rejected the argument, stating that the accounts cited by Ibori’s lawyers were not the basis for calculating the confiscation amount.
Ibori governed Delta State between 1999 and 2007 before his conviction in the United Kingdom for fraud, conspiracy to defraud and money laundering.
According to the court, he systematically defrauded the people of Delta State through inflated government contracts, diversion of public funds and other financial transactions.
The proceeds were allegedly channelled through a network of companies and bank accounts across different countries before being invested in properties and other assets.
He was extradited from the United Arab Emirates to the UK in April 2011 and pleaded guilty to multiple offences.
On April 17, 2012, he was sentenced to 13 years’ imprisonment but was released in December 2016 after serving part of his sentence.
In July 2023, Southwark Crown Court ordered him to forfeit £101,514,315.21, representing the criminal benefits established during the proceedings.
The order required him to pay the amount immediately or face an eight-year default prison sentence.
The latest Court of Appeal ruling leaves the £101.5m confiscation order intact, although Ibori indicated that he was consulting his lawyers on possible further legal action.
