Nine Oil Smugglers To Go To Jail Or Pay N20 Million Fine

Five sailors from the Philippines and four from Bangladesh who smuggled over 3,000 tones of crude oil were arraigned on Tuesday, December 15, before a Nigerian court.
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The suspects were arrested in March in Lagos Lagoon aboard the MT Asteris. The court gave them a choice between jail and paying a hefty fine.

Each of them was convicted of four counts of illegally storing crude oil. All in all, they stored 3,423 tonnes of crude oil.

They face a maximum of five years jail, or they can pay a fine of N20 million ($100,000 dollars).

Africa’s biggest oil producer loses billions of dollars each year from the sabotaged pipelines and illegal refining of oil products.

The oil is sold on the lucrative black market, depriving the continent’s most populous state of an estimated $6 billion a year in lost revenue.

Most of the time oil smugglers get away with a fine.

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