An entrepot at the tip of the Niger Delta, Bonny Island used to be known for oil, gas, pirates, and pygmy hippos. Now it’s synonymous with bribery.
In 1995 a mostly European consortium won the first of $6 billion in contracts to build a liquefied natural gas plant—in return for about $180 million in bribes to the Nigerian kleptocrat Sani Abacha and his henchmen. Now nearly a decade of public investigation has culminated over the past 18 months in a steady stream of record-setting Bonny Island pleas and deferred prosecution agreements. In the long history of corruption, and the short history of anticorruption efforts, the Bonny buccaneers account for four of the six largest total penalties, three of the top four corporate disgorgements, and by far the largest individual forfeiture [see "$1.66 Billion Worth of Pleas," page 29].
