The Federal Bureau of Investigation has hand delivered records of President Bola Tinubu’s 1993 drug-trafficking and money-laundering case to Judge Howell Beryl of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, saying they are for her eyes only, court filings seen by Peoples Gazette indicated.
The FBI secretly submitted the records on Friday to avoid disobeying a court order while sidelining transparency campaigner, Aaron Greenspan, who petitioned the Bureau for the Nigerian leader’s records in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Following years of foot-dragging on a FOI petition filed by Mr Greenspan in 2023, the FBI on Friday complied with a court order directing it to release Mr Tinubu’s records. Mr Greenspan worked with Nigerian journalist, David Hundeyin, to file the petition in 2023.
The records submitted as “under seal, ex parte, in camera declarations were hand delivered to the Court on August 28, 2026 in compliance with this Court’s Minute Order dated August 20, 2026,” filings showed.
Ms Beryl lost her patience with the FBI after the bureau missed several deadlines , giving excuses on why it could not immediately provide the records.
She issued August 28 as the final ultimatum to the FBI, which prompted the FBI’s decision to comply, showing it “in camera” to the judge alone, without carrying along the petitioner.
Earlier this week , FBI claimed that submitting the records would violate Mr Tinubu’s privacy and argued that FOI was established to screen the operations and records of government institutions, not necessarily private individuals.
For decades, Mr Tinubu has avoided speaking on the drug affair, refusing to clarify controversies surrounding his involvement in a case that saw him forfeit hundreds of thousands of dollars to the U.S. government.
Mr Tinubu also sought to block the release of his records, asserting his rivals only sought to use them to discredit him in a Nigerian presidential election. He begged the court to protect his privacy rights.
The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in 2023 released documents holding Mr Tinubu’s encounter with American authorities over allegations of narcotics trafficking and money laundering.