Nigerian who made history as first African mayor of Leeds in money laundering scandal 

A Nigerian woman, Abigail Katung, who became the first person of African descent to hold the position of the Lord Mayor of Leeds, has been mentioned in a money laundering scandal.

In a judgement on a civil suit delivered on 6 June, the UK High Court of Justice at the King’s Bench Division granted a forfeiture order on a property occupied by Mrs Katung.

The property, occupied by Mrs Katung and her two children, was owned by Mansoor Hussain, a businessman in Leeds accused by the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) of having links to serious criminals and money laundering.

Mrs Katung is the wife of Nigerian Senator Sunday Katung. She signed a Contract of Sale agreement to purchase the property from Mr Hussain in 2015.

PREMIUM TIMES reported that Mrs Katung made a deposit of £400,000, of the  £1,000,000 agreed, to acquire the property in 2015.

However, the UK High Court investigated the source of £360,000 out of the initial deposit by Mrs Katung. Court documents suggested possible money laundering activities in Mrs Katung’s transaction, which was made between April and May 2015, several days after her husband’s election as a member of the House of Representatives.

The judge questioned the shady nature of the payments made by the lawmaker’s wife.

The Lord Mayor of Leeds

Mrs Katung was announced as the Lord Mayor of Leeds in May 2024, succeeding Al Garthwaite as the city’s 130th Lord Mayor and the first person of African descent to hold the position.

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Prior to this position, Councillor Katung was the first African to become a ward member of Leeds City Council in 2019 when she was elected to represent the Little London and Woodhouse ward in the city centre. She was subsequently re-elected at the 2023 elections.

A British-Nigerian, Mrs Katung was born in Zaria, Kaduna State, and arrived in the UK to study at the University of Leeds as a postgraduate student in the Politics & International Studies Department in 2000.

Within Leeds City Council, Mrs Katung has assumed various leadership roles, including chairing the scrutiny board for adult health and active lifestyles and the scrutiny board for infrastructure, investment and inclusive growth.

She was also a lead member for faith and belief, chaired the hate crime strategic board and further education 14-19 years, and is a food champion.

“Since arriving in Leeds in 2000, the city quickly became my cherished second home. It was not just the city where I lived, studied, and worked, it’s where I chose to raise my children and become a public servant,” she said during her appointment in 2024.

Investigations Hearing 

Mrs Katung told the court that her husband obtained a loan of N120 million from a Nigerian bank and then used a Bureau De Change Operator (BDC) in Nigeria to exchange naira into pounds sterling and remit it to a Barclays bank account in the name of 1st Resource, a company owned by Mrs Katung.

She said her husband used agents in the UK to get the money to her via her company’s account.

The court found that the majority of payments made into the bank account of 1st Resource could not have been from UK agents of BDCs in Nigeria.

Mrs Katung said that she relied on family and friends to make some of the payments.

The judge then instructed Mrs Katung to provide an “adequate, documented explanation” of the whole payments she made to Mr Hussain in 2015.

But, she has failed to do that, the judge said.

“It was incumbent on her to take proactive steps to ensure that a properly evidenced account was given to the Court.”

Also, “Mrs Katung’s witness statements in the proceedings did not address how the payments were made, nor did they seek to explain what she had said at interview.”

READ ALSO: EXCLUSIVE: Wife of Nigerian senator in money laundering mess in UK

“More surprisingly, Mrs Katung has disclosed very little documentation which bears on these transfers, and there is no witness statement from her husband. These are telling omissions from which I draw an adverse inference,” the judge said.

The judge added that he was satisfied on the “balance of probabilities” that some of the BDCs mentioned by Mrs Katung were not even licensed to undertake foreign exchange transactions in Nigeria.

Therefore, the judge ruled that Mrs Katung was only “conducting a business in foreign exchange transactions to circumvent Nigerian foreign exchange regulations and/or to avoid a punitive exchange rate.”

“I reach my conclusion on the basis of: (1) paragraph 72 of Mr Coles’ eighth witness statement (2) the adverse inferences to be drawn from the Honey Oil material, and (3) the adverse inferences to be drawn from Mrs Katung’s failure to file a witness statement from her husband and to disclose relevant documentation,” the judge said.

In its argument, the NCA contended that the entire property, including the deposit made by Mrs Katung, represented money obtained by criminal conduct. Hence, the property was recoverable property under the UK Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA).

The court concluded that the property and its possession should be recovered by the NCA and should be treated as vesting the entirety of the property in the Trustee.

The judge added that “no credit falls to be given for the value of the deposit payments made by Mrs Katung.”

In a Wednesday statement reacting to PREMIUM TIMES’s exclusive story on the matter, Mr Katung’s spokesperson said the judgement against Mrs Katung was already a “subject matter of an appeal. It is therefore too early in the day to draw conclusions until the appeal process has been exhausted.”

“For the avoidance of doubt, Senator Sunday Marshall Katung and his Wife, Abigail Katung have always conducted their affairs lawfully and transparently, and will pursue all necessary legal action to correct this defamatory narrative.”