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.
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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