The $2.8 million mansion, tucked at the end of a private drive, boasts a climate-controlled wine cellar, sauna and four fireplaces — features not uncommon to this wealthy part of the Washington suburbs.
But the man who bought the place a couple of years ago did not stick around to enjoy them, neighbors said. He introduced himself, then disappeared, leaving some wondering what was happening behind his nine-foot-tall carved-wood front doors.
The mansions in leafy McLean, Va., like mansions everywhere, tend to hold interesting characters with money. Here along a quiet street in a neighborhood called The Ridings, there’s a noted plastic surgeon, a high-powered corporate lawyer and the CEO of a defense consulting firm, among others, property records show.
But court filings in Nigeria, as well as those from an insurance claim surrounding a jewelry theft from another mansion near Beverly Hills, California, suggest the owner of the McLean residence has a different type of story.
The way Nigerian authorities tell it, their country’s former national security adviser misappropriated more than $2 billion from his own government, routing some of it to a family friend — the man who bought the mansion in McLean. In the United States, according to Nigerian authorities, the man sought to launder the money in part by purchasing homes.
The allegations against him, experts say, underscore a significant global issue: The U.S. real estate market has become a money-laundering haven for corrupt officials and criminals across the world, a place to hide their cash behind opaque shell companies.
Next year, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network will begin receiving reports under a new rule requiring title companies and others to collect information about certain real estate sales — particularly transactions where the buyer is a trust or some other legal entity and pays with cash.
For this story, a Paris-based anticorruption group, the Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa, provided court documents, property records and analyses of them to The Post, as well as to the Premium Times, a Nigerian news organization, as part of a broader investigation into money laundering in real estate. The Post verified facts and obtained additional information independently.
A visitor to the quiet cul-de-sac in McLean would have no reason to suspect something amiss, even were they to venture along the private drive past two other high-end homes and knock on the mansion’s imposing front doors. The secluded lawn is freshly cut, the rosebushes neatly trimmed.
But behind its drawn curtains, Nigerian law enforcement officials allege, lies a tale of embezzlement, corruption and money laundered across the globe.
Authorities say close friends of an alleged kleptocrat bought properties with cash meant to fight Boko Haram, underscoring how the U.S. has become a money-laundering haven.
