Court records link Nigerian vice president to probe of congressman

WASHINGTON — Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., told a business associate that the vice president of Nigeria was demanding half the profits of their telecommunications partnership and they would have to "deal with him," according to court records unsealed Monday.

An alleged plan to bribe Atiku Abubakar to exert influence over the Nigerian state phone company NiTel had been alluded to in earlier court documents in the 15-month federal investigation of Jefferson, but the vice president had not previously been named.

Prompted by separate suits filed by The Washington Post and The Times-Picayune, judges in Maryland and Louisiana agreed to unseal portions of the FBI documents filed to support the Aug. 3 search of Abubakar's Potomac, Md., home, Jefferson's residences in Washington and New Orleans and the office of the congressman's New Orleans-based accountant Jack Swetland.

Jefferson has not been charged and has denied taking bribes. His attorney declined comment Monday.

A lawyer for Abubakar could not be reached for comment.

The court documents include excerpts of wiretap recordings of Jefferson's conversations with Lori Mody, who was secretly working for the FBI.

One of the surprises of the court records opened Monday was the name of another target in the case: Suleiman YahYah, chairman and CEO of Rosecom.Net, an Internet service provider in Nigeria.

Rosecom was to have been the Nigerian partner for Mody's company, which was called W2IBBS Ltd.

According to the transcripts, Jefferson told Mody that Abubakar was demanding 50 percent of the profits earned by YahYah's company. Jefferson said that Abubakar had made the demand during a private one-hour meeting at the vice president's home.

"We have a deal with him," he told Mody.

He also told her in a separate wiretapped call that YahYah was critical to the success of the planned venture in Nigeria.

"We need him," Jefferson told her over dinner in Washington. "We got to motivate him real good. He's got a lot of folks to pay off."

The FBI alleges that Jefferson was using his influence to help a small Kentucky firm, iGate, launch its novel high-speed Internet technology in Nigeria.

In exchange, the FBI says, Jefferson sought shares of iGate and cash funneled to firms set up in the names of his wife and five daughters.