- •Why Tali Shani UK property transfer failed
Everything about the case reeked. The smell oozed from a distance that anybody could perceive it. Both parties were up to something, and they used virtually every trick in the book to get their way. But the watchful judge was a step ahead of them, waiting for the appropriate time to bring down the gavel. He did seven days ago.
Both parties lost woefully, and were ordered to bear their own costs, that is each party will be responsible for the expenses incurred on litigation. The case of the applicant and the respondent was bad ab initio. Interestingly, a strange name was at the centre of the legal drama. The applicant, who claimed to be a woman but never showed up in court for the over two years that the case lasted, gave her name as ‘Ms Tali Shani’.
To the respondent, Mike Ozekhome (SAN), the ‘Tali Shani’ that ‘gifted’ him the property was a man. Ozekhome was seeking the transfer and registration of the property at 79, Randall Avenue, London NW2 7SX to himself in terms of the ‘gift’. He claimed that “the transfer is not for money or anything that has monetary value”, but in consideration for his “legal services”, which he added, the client could not pay for anyway. The court held that he never stated the nature of the ‘legal services’.
‘Ms Tali Shani’ took the wind out of Ozekhome’s sail when she objected to the transfer on the grounds that she is the original owner of the property. Judge Ewan Paton was faced with a puzzle. First, to unravel the gender of this ‘Tali Shani’, and second, to determine who he should order the Land Registry to give the property to between Ozekhome and ‘Ms Tali Shani’. This decision became the lot of Paton, who was called to bar in 1996, and became a judge four years ago, to make when the issue became too hot for the registry to handle.
Paton’s observations are noteworthy: “That apparently routine application (of transfer and registration) has, however, generated proceedings of a quite extraordinary nature. At their heart are mutual allegations of identity fraud by impersonation. These in turn generated multiple allegations of forgery of documents, fraud, conspiracy and corruption of public officials. A key figure in both parties’ cases… was a very prominent and now deceased former Nigerian general and politician, General Jeremiah Useni”.
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Jeremiah ‘Jerry Boy’ Useni, who the court eventually identified as ‘Tali Shani’ and who admitted in the cited Jersey Royal Court matter that he used ‘coined’ names, such as ‘Tim Shani’, to transact businesses, testified in the Randall case for Ozekhome. Though, Useni died in the course of proceedings, his testimony helped Paton in deciding the case. Conversely, ‘Ms Tali Shani’ and her lawyers were busy giving all sorts of excuses for her non-appearance in court, including faking her illness, purported death and funeral, as the judge held.
The Randall property is valued at over £700,000. One of the questions the judge asked during the proceedings was where ‘Tali Shani’, who was called as a witness by Ozekhome got the money to acquire the property in 1993 when he was just 20 years old. The witness claimed to be a cattle rearer and mango and sweet trader in school! He said he bought the property and gave it toUseni to manage.
The same question can be asked from ‘Jerry Boy’. Where did Useni, who the court held to be the owner of the property, get the money to buy it, as a soldier then? It goes without saying that he could not have bought it from his legitimate earnings, and also at the same time have another property described as Flat 213 Quadrangle Tower Cambridge Square London W2 2PJ.
Money from the Quadrangle was said to have been used to run the Randall property. As a reputed lawyer, was Ozekhome not curious about the house ‘gift’ from Useni? As a rights activist, critic and anti-corruption crusader, did he not ask his friend where the money for the property came from? By accepting the ‘gift’ and attempting to formalise its acquisition without asking questions, can he still lay claim to being a social crusader? Crusading comes at a price, a steep price, at that. No other person should know this more than Ozekhome who practiced in Gani Fawehinmi’s chambers as a young lawyer.
If not for Judge Paton, the property would have changed hands without the gullible Nigerian public being any wiser about some of the things their so-called heroes do. The name ‘Tali Shani’ should have sounded the alarm bell and made Ozekhome to ask questions. Rather, he told the court that such names are common in Nigeria. Really?
As the judge said: “Mr Tali Shani – whether that is the name he was born with, or whether it was changed at some point in the past – was simply a vehicle or conduit by which General Useni tried to transfer to the respondent a property previously registered by him in the false name ‘Tali Shani’ in 1993. I do not know, and do not need to make findings, on how and when General Useni first came across and involved Mr Tali Shani in this or any other transaction…; whether this man already had that name (which the respondent himself said was not an uncommon name in Nigeria)… I do find, however, that he did not purchase this property himself in 1993, and so had no title of his own to pass to the respondent.
“Both parties have failed. Neither ‘Tali Shani’ was who they said they were, and neither was the person who purchased this property in 1993. The real owner, via a false name, was General Jeremiah Useni. His evidence clears all doubts about the ownership. I have him on record as saying: ‘I owned it… I bought the property… before I gave it to someone to run… I paid the deposit… then bit by bit… I bought it… It is my property’”.
With these words, he lengthened his name to Jeremiah ‘Jerry Boy Tali Shani’ Useni; and unwittingly voided the property ‘gift’ to his good friend and lawyer.
