When Abdulrasheed Maina was appointed to lead Nigeria’s Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms, he was entrusted with one of the most sensitive mandates in public service: safeguarding the retirement savings of millions of Nigerians. The task force was created to clean up decades of fraud in the pension system, modernize verification processes, and ensure that public funds meant for elderly retirees actually reached their intended beneficiaries. Instead, Maina’s tenure became synonymous with one of Nigeria’s most notorious corruption scandals-one that continues to reverberate years after his conviction.

New reporting has now added another layer to that story. Investigations by journalists from OCCRP, Premium Times, and the Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa (PPLAAF) have uncovered at least four foreign properties that Maina purchased in the United States and the United Arab Emirates, at a time when Nigerian courts later found he was laundering public pension funds. These assets, bought outright with no mortgage-“cash in hand,” according to property records-appear to have escaped seizure by Nigerian authorities, even as dozens of properties linked to Maina inside Nigeria were confiscated.

Maina chaired the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms between 2010 and 2013, a period marked by promises of transparency and technological reform. The task force was meant to introduce biometric enrollment systems to weed out “ghost pensioners” and halt the siphoning of funds. Prosecutors now allege that Maina used this very reform agenda as a cover for fraud, awarding sham contracts for biometric equipment and services to companies he secretly controlled.

According to court filings, these contracts allowed large sums of pension money to be diverted under the guise of official allowances and enrollment expenses. In one ongoing case, prosecutors allege that Maina dishonestly received 700 million naira-worth about $4.5 million at the time-through fake biometric enrollment contracts. That trial is still underway.

In a separate case, Maina was convicted in 2021 of money laundering. The court found that he had laundered pension funds on a massive scale, receiving more than 2 billion naira (nearly $5 million in 2021 terms) that bore no relation to his lawful income as a civil servant. Federal High Court judge Okon Abang underscored this disparity at sentencing, noting that Maina’s salary-just over 300,000 naira per month-could not plausibly have produced such wealth even over decades of saving.

Maina was sentenced to up to eight years in prison. Although he has consistently proclaimed his innocence, the conviction stands.

Following the 2021 conviction, the Nigerian government moved to recover stolen public funds. Authorities ordered Maina to pay 2.1 billion naira and seized at least 20 properties across Nigeria, including luxury mansions purchased with cash. In a final ruling in 2024, courts formally forfeited these properties to the state.

Yet investigators appear to have missed assets held abroad.

During the money laundering trial, a detective briefly mentioned in testimony that Maina owned properties in the United States. No further details were made public, and Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) did not pursue visible seizure proceedings overseas.

Property records obtained by journalists now fill in the gaps. They show that Maina acquired three residential properties in Kentucky while serving as pension reform chief, and later purchased a high-end hotel apartment in Dubai shortly after his removal from office.

All three US properties were purchased outright, without any mortgage or loan. In August 2010, Maina bought a house in Frankfort, Kentucky, for $215,000. This purchase came just one month after prosecutors allege he received the equivalent of roughly $1.7 million through fraudulent biometric contracts.

In August 2011, a US company linked to Maina-VIU Investment LLC-purchased two additional homes in Kentucky for a combined $415,000. Court documents in Nigeria allege that between July and December 2011, Maina and a co-conspirator received nearly $1 million more through another fake biometric contract. The timing of the purchases closely overlaps with the alleged inflow of illicit funds.

In January 2013, ownership of the two properties was transferred from VIU Investment LLC to Maina personally, and then to the Abdulrasheed Maina Children’s Trust-a trust he established for his children. Journalists say it is unclear whether the structure or beneficiaries of the trust have changed since.

Finally, in June 2013-about three months after Maina was removed from his pension reform role-he bought a two-bedroom hotel apartment in Dubai for nearly $670,000. That property is now owned by his daughter.

The ownership trail of these properties runs through Maina’s immediate family, complicating efforts to recover assets. One US property is currently in the possession of his former wife, Laila Abdulrasheed Maina, now known in the US as Laila Duke Williams. Two others are held by the children’s trust. The Dubai apartment belongs to his daughter.

Laila Maina lived with him in Dubai and the US until his arrest in 2019. When she filed for divorce in 2021, she told a US family court that she was unemployed. Yet earlier, she had argued before a Nigerian court that she was the rightful owner of some of the properties Nigerian authorities accused Maina of acquiring with stolen pension funds.

In a 2019 affidavit filed in Nigeria, Laila claimed she purchased properties using proceeds from a business exporting African fabrics to the US. She provided no documentary evidence of income from such a business. The EFCC countered that she had never engaged in any export activity from either Nigeria or the US.

Despite these disputes, a US court awarded Laila possession of the Frankfort, Kentucky, home as part of the couple’s 2022 divorce settlement. She did not respond to journalists’ requests for comment.

When contacted by reporters, EFCC spokesperson Dele Oyewale declined to comment on the specifics of the Maina investigation but acknowledged that the agency could pursue assets held abroad if credible information is available. “If we have the information in that regard, we would want to pursue it,” he said.

Asset recovery across borders is notoriously complex. It requires cooperation from foreign jurisdictions, mutual legal assistance treaties, and extensive legal proceedings. In practice, many corruption cases end with domestic seizures while offshore assets remain untouched for years-or indefinitely.

For critics, the newly revealed properties highlight gaps in Nigeria’s anti-corruption enforcement. They also raise uncomfortable questions about how easily public officials can move illicit wealth into real estate markets abroad, often using family members or trusts to shield ownership.

Maina’s legal saga has been unusually convoluted, even by Nigeria’s standards. In 2013, as investigations closed in, he fled Nigeria to Dubai. In 2017, public outrage erupted when journalists revealed that he had been secretly reinstated into the civil service and even promoted-despite being a fugitive.

He was arrested in Abuja in 2019, alongside his son Faisal, during a dramatic hotel raid. Faisal reportedly brandished a pistol and rammed a bulletproof Range Rover into the hotel gate in a failed escape attempt. Faisal was later convicted in 2021 of money laundering related to pension funds and sentenced in absentia after fleeing on bail. He is believed to be residing in the United States.

Maina himself jumped bail in 2020 during his money laundering trial, fleeing again-this time to neighboring Niger. Authorities later tracked him down as he allegedly attempted to obtain travel documents to abscond to the US, where he and his family hold dual citizenship. He was extradited back to Nigeria to face trial.

Despite being sentenced to a maximum of eight years, Maina was released early in February 2025 for what the Nigerian Correctional Service described as “good conduct and industry.” Since then, he has largely stayed out of public view.

That changed recently when a local branch of the Nigerian Bar Association appointed him as a patron and presented him with a “Rule of Law and Courage Award.” The decision triggered swift backlash. Within a day, the national Nigerian Bar Association condemned the appointment and announced disciplinary proceedings against the lawyer involved.

Maina’s story is about more than a single disgraced official. It underscores systemic weaknesses in oversight, enforcement, and asset recovery-both in Nigeria and internationally. Pension funds, by their nature, are meant to provide dignity and security to the elderly. When those entrusted with protecting them divert resources for personal enrichment, the damage is both financial and moral.

The discovery of Maina’s foreign properties years after his conviction suggests that the full financial footprint of corruption cases often remains hidden. For Nigerians who lost faith in the pension system, and for retirees who suffered delays and hardship, the unanswered question remains: how much stolen wealth is still sitting safely beyond the reach of justice?

As investigations continue and courts deliberate on Maina’s remaining charges, the properties in Kentucky and Dubai stand as concrete symbols of that question-quiet reminders that corruption, once exported, is far harder to bring home.

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