This Special Report was originally published by Premium Times Newspaper By Nicholas Ibekwe
Moves by Venture Garden Nigeria Limited, arguably Nigeria’s biggest financial technology (fintech) company, to evade tax payment in Nigeria have been revealed.
Investigations unveil ongoing plans by Venture Garden to transfer the intellectual property rights of its software from Nigeria to the Indian Ocean Island country.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) obtained and shared the documents with media organisations around the world including Premium Times in Nigeria.
Revealed are also audio files retrieved from the Mauritius office of international law firm and offshore service provider, Conyers Dill Pearman.
After a 2017 buyout by its employees, Conyer Dill Pearman became known as Venture Law Ltd and Venture Corporate Services Ltd.
Venture Garden Group
According to a May 2015 Structure Chart of the company obtained by PREMIUM TIMES, Venture Garden Nigeria Limited is wholly owned by Venture Garden Group (VGG), a company incorporated in Mauritius. The ultimate beneficial owners of VGG are Olubunmi Akinyemiju and Olubukunmi Demuren. They both own 50 per cent each of the company.
Mr Akinyemiju, 42, is a fintech whiz and CEO of the company. In 2017 he was nominated as one of the top 100 Most Influential People of African Descent (MIPAD) in Business and Entrepreneurship. The award is given in support of the International Decade for People of African Descent to be observed from 2015 to 2024 proclaimed by United Nation’s General Assembly resolution 68/237.
Perhaps he received that accolade because two years earlier he had spearheaded VGG’s drive that resulted in a $20 million investment from one of Africa’s leading venture capital firms, Convergence Partners.
His partner, Mr Demuren, is the son of a former director-general of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, Harold Demuren. Skypower Aircraft Leasing Limited, owned by the senior Demuren, was found to have been registered in Mauritius, as well.
VGG prides itself as “a leading provider of innovative, data-driven, end-to-end technology platforms addressing reconciliation and payment processing inefficiencies across multiple sectors of the African economy.”
The company is also involved in data gathering and management as well as revenue collection for government agencies, ministries and corporations. A big chunk of its investment is in payment automation and solutions in the sectors where it operates
The company reportedly has a $60 million investment in five main subsidiaries – education, power, fintech, aviation, and petroleum sectors.
In 2016, it established Greenhouse Capital, an investment company. Green House is a burgeoning investment octopus with its tentacles in at least 15 start-ups in Nigeria and five other countries. Its total investment chest is valued at over $4 million.
The start-ups in which Green House has investments include payment solution firm, Flutterwave; motorcycle hailing company, Max.ng; remittance provider, Sureremit; Growth Capital, a social innovation fund by Co-Creation Hub; Hellium, a healthcare service, and several others.
Vice President Yemi-Osinbajo
In June last year, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo was on hand to commission VGG’s tech hub in Lagos, named Vibranium Valley. Vibranium Valley currently houses over 30 startups, with a capacity to host about 20 more.
But while growing its tentacles in Nigeria, the company has also set in motion plans that could enable it to pay fewer taxes to the country where it is domiciled.
The Business Plan
According to VGG’s “Business Plan” obtained by this newspaper as part of the over 200,000 documents obtained by the ICIJ, it chose to domicile its parent company in Mauritius because it is “located favourably…
[3:35 PM, 7/25/2019] Tobi SR Cc: China Has So Much Petrol, They Are Selling To Nigeria And Mexico
Traders have informed Reuters that there is an overflow of petrol in China, which is prompting companies in the country to export some of its excess to oil producing countries like Nigeria, Mexico and Chile. Two companies— Hengli and Zhejiang, in the South-East Asian super power, are each developing 4 million ton capacity gasoline refineries that are expected to come on stream at the end of the year.
These firms have however begun to receive supply quotas that are glutting the market and prompting increased exports.
“Gasoline was overflowing (in China) as Hengli shocked the market…companies took the advantage of stronger demand in Latin America and West Africa,” a senior trader told Reuters. Reuters reports that Chinese petroleum refining companies are searching for outlets for their products, due to a drop in domestic demand.
The love for automobiles in China is dropping fast, with available data showing that sales of automobiles have been on a 12-month decline. Seng-Yick Tee, senior director at consultancy SIA Energy, informed Reuters that the forecast for China’s gasoline demand is a rise of 5.4% this year. This is the slowest growth rate of fuel need in the highly industrialised economy since 2015 and it is thanks to falling auto sales. This drop however, might be catalyzed by the trade war between China and the United States of America, according to Michal Meidan, director of the China energy programme at Oxford Institute of Energy Studies.
“Gasoline surplus in China is exacerbated by slowing demand growth, given weakening consumer confidence as the trade war continues, reflected also in slumping car sales,” Meidan told Reuters.
Another reason for the petrol glut in the country, which is triggering sales to Nigeria’s capacious market, is the decline in the industrial demand for diesel. This has forced refineries to double down on the production of the truck and heavy machinery fuel. Consequently, China’s gasoline production output in the first two quarters of 2019 rose 2.9% from a year earlier and diesel dropped 7.8%, according to the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics. Petro China, the second largest refiner in the country, is scheduled to export 1.5m tons of petrol in July and August much of which will be absorbed by the Nigerian market.
Nigeria trucks out between 45 million to 50 million liters of petrol a day, much of which is smuggled out of the country to Benin Republic, Cameroon and other border countries due to the cheap subsidized price of the product. The country’s Port Harcourt refinery is undergoing phase 1 of its first refurbishment in 19 years, as a higher percentage of gasoline consumed in the country is imported. In 2018, the refineries in Port Harcourt did not function for seven months that of Kaduna did not work for 11 months while the refinery in Warri worked for nine months. The three refineries combined, lost N132 billion according to data from the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation.
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