Cheta Nwanze
The acquittal of Nigeria’s former petroleum minister Diezani Alison-Madueke at Southwark Crown Court, London, on 17 June 2026 has brought up an uncomfortable question that has long shadowed international anti-corruption efforts: is justice truly universal, or is it reserved for the powerless?
After a nearly six-month trial and more than 46 hours of deliberation, a London jury cleared Alison-Madueke of five counts of accepting bribes and one count of conspiracy to commit bribery, ending an 11-year pursuit by the UK’s National Crime Agency, which first arrested her in October 2015. Her co-defendants were also acquitted.
Yet the verdict has done little to settle what makes me uneasy.
Why was a former Nigerian minister pursued with such vigour while the men alleged to have paid the bribes were never charged? During the defence’s closing submissions, Diezani’s counsel posed a question many have quietly asked: “One can be forgiven for wondering whether parliament, in its wisdom, when enacting the Bribery Act, could have contemplated this absurd situation where the people who are alleged to have paid the bribes are free, while the accused has been held prisoner for 11 years.”
This pattern is not unique. The UK’s International Corruption Unit, largely funded by UK aid money, has focused overwhelmingly on developing countries. Its targets have disproportionately been individuals and entities from countries with limited geopolitical leverage, while some of the world’s most politically sensitive corruption cases have been handled with notably greater delicacy.
Which brings us to the uncomfortable question: would the UK have prosecuted a Saudi prince, a UAE sheikh, or a Chinese minister? The historical record offers little encouragement. Between 2022 and 2023, the Metropolitan Police investigated the Prince’s Foundation, the charity set up by King Charles III when he was Prince of Wales, over claims that his former aide Michael Fawcett had promised to help a Saudi billionaire, Mahfouz Marei Mubarak bin Mahfouz, obtain an honorary CBE and British citizenship in exchange for donations. In August 2023, the investigation was quietly dropped without charges. The message was unmistakable: when the geopolitically connected are involved, the machinery of justice tends to stall.
The broader history of Saudi-related enforcement is even starker. In 2006, the Serious Fraud Office was investigating BAE Systems over hundreds of millions of pounds in alleged secret payments to Saudi officials and intermediaries, including, according to court proceedings, payments connected to the $43 billion Al-Yamamah arms deal. The investigation was abruptly halted after Saudi Arabia’s rulers threatened to withdraw vital intelligence cooperation on terrorism and to cancel the Eurofighter Typhoon contract, with the implicit message that prosecuting their interests would carry consequences for British lives. The High Court initially condemned this as a “successful attempt by a foreign government to pervert the course of justice in the United Kingdom”; the House of Lords ultimately upheld the British government’s decision to drop the case on national security grounds. No Saudi official was ever prosecuted.
The UK’s relationship with the UAE tells a similar story. Rather than pursuing prosecutions of Emirati officials over illicit financial flows, the UK signed a landmark partnership agreement with the UAE in September 2021, ratified by Home Secretary at the time, Priti Patel and UAE Minister of State Ahmed Ali Al Sayegh, to strengthen cooperation on combating money laundering and terrorist financing. Further bilateral visits deepened the arrangement in 2024 and 2025. Cooperation, not confrontation: a diplomatic solution that avoids the embarrassment of targeting allied officials. When it comes to China, the pattern holds: no Chinese minister or senior state official has been publicly prosecuted under the UK Bribery Act, despite China having been the most frequently cited jurisdiction in global foreign bribery enforcement investigations over the past three decades.
Diezani’s acquittal is a significant setback for UK anti-corruption authorities, but it raises broader questions about the legitimacy of their enterprise. If the UK is serious about fighting global corruption, it must apply its laws even-handedly, not only when the target is a former official from a country with limited power to push back.
A Nigerian minister can be arrested, held for 11 years, subjected to a six-month public trial and still emerge with her reputation in ruins, even after acquittal. A Saudi arms deal? It gets a diplomatic phone call and a quiet burial. A royal charity scandal involving a Gulf billionaire? No further action. That is not justice. That is selective enforcement dressed in the language of righteousness.
Nwanze is CEO at SBM Intelligence
