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An investigative report by the Foundation for Investigative Journalism has put a spotlight on the legal and regulatory histories of the major players behind Nigeria's $1 billion Snake Island Port concession in Lagos, revealing a trail of bribery penalties, money laundering convictions and criminal tax charges linked to the companies and individuals at the center of the deal.
The 45-year concession was signed between Nigerdock, the Nigerian maritime company operating Snake Island Port, and MSC Group, the Geneva-based container shipping giant. MSC, controlled by the secretive Aponte-Diamant family and now the world's largest container line, will operate the terminal once it is built. To build it, MSC Group brought in ITB Construction Nigeria Limited and Belgium's DEME Group under an Engineering, Procurement and Construction contract signed alongside the concession agreement. The terminal is expected to be completed by 2028 and is estimated to cost between $700 million and $1 billion.
ITB Nigeria is a subsidiary of the Chagoury Group, the conglomerate co-founded in 1971 by Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire Gilbert Chagoury and his brother Ronald Chagoury. Gilbert Chagoury, now 81, is one of the most powerful private businessmen in Nigeria and a well-documented ally of President Bola Tinubu, with a relationship stretching back to Tinubu's time as governor of Lagos State. The Chagoury Group's empire spans construction, real estate, hospitality, healthcare, telecommunications, flour milling, water purification, insurance and international financing. Its footprint in Lagos is hard to miss: Banana Island, Eko Atlantic City and the Eko Hotel are all Chagoury-linked developments.
But Gilbert Chagoury carries a significant legal history. According to FIJ's reporting, his principal legal exposure centers on events in the 1990s, when he served as a top adviser and financial handler for Sani Abacha, the late Nigerian military ruler whose regime looted an estimated $2 billion to $5 billion from the Nigerian treasury. In 2000, Chagoury pleaded guilty in a U.S. federal court to conspiracy to launder money linked to funds stolen by the Abacha regime. Court records show he agreed to forfeit approximately $66 million, which was later repatriated to Nigeria. Swiss authorities also convicted him of money laundering and aiding a criminal organization in connection with accounts at a Geneva bank through which transfers exceeding $120 million flowed to entities linked to the Abacha family.
More recently, in 2021, U.S. authorities reached a civil forfeiture settlement of $1.8 million with Chagoury following claims that he had made illegal foreign political donations to U.S. candidates through straw donors across three election cycles. He later entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Justice Department. Despite these proceedings, Chagoury has maintained he committed no wrongdoing. He continued building his business empire in Nigeria and, in January 2026, President Tinubu conferred on him the Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger, Nigeria's second-highest national honour.
The Snake Island contract is not Chagoury's first major infrastructure win under the Tinubu administration. In 2024, his Hitech Construction Company was awarded the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project, valued at up to $11 billion, without a public competitive bid. In early 2025, ITB Construction Nigeria was selected by Nigeria's Federal Executive Committee to refurbish the Tin Can and Apapa ports under a contract worth approximately N1.1 trillion, despite what critics described as limited experience in seaport construction.
Belgium-based DEME Group, the dredging and marine engineering giant that will co-build the Snake Island terminal alongside ITB, has its own documented legal history. In 2017, Swiss prosecutors issued penalty orders against DEME and its subsidiary Dredging International Services (Cyprus) for failing to prevent bribery involving Nigerian public officials. The payments totaled approximately CHF 20 million, channeled through offshore entities. Two DEME employees and a financial intermediary were also convicted in connection with the scheme. Separately, from 2016 to 2026, DEME and several executives were investigated in Belgium over bribery allegations tied to a EUR 420 million dredging contract at the Sabetta LNG port in Russia. That case went to trial and was ultimately dismissed on appeal in 2026, with Belgian courts acquitting DEME and the executives involved. In Nigeria, DEME's subsidiary faced a 2018 parliamentary inquiry over a $44 million Escravos Channel dredging contract, triggered by spillovers from the Swiss bribery case. No criminal convictions or fines resulted from that Nigerian probe.
Nigerdock itself, the company that awarded the concession to MSC Group, is not without its own regulatory difficulties. In 2024, the Federal Government of Nigeria filed criminal charges against Nigerdock Limited and seven of its directors at the Federal High Court in Lagos for tax evasion. The company was accused of failing to pay Companies Income Tax, Withholding Tax and Tertiary Education Tax between 2015 and 2018, totaling approximately N68.7 million including penalties and interest. The charges were brought even as Nigerdock continued to operate the Snake Island facility.
FIJ's report also notes that questions about the Snake Island facility itself date back further. In 2008, Nigeria's House of Representatives opened an investigation into the privatisation of the Snake Island Integrated Free Zone and the free zone licence granted through the Nigerian Export Processing Zones Authority, including whether a payment of approximately N1.72 billion made during the facility's acquisition was properly directed into the government's privatization account. A 2009 parliamentary recommendation to withdraw the licence and probe the acquisition further was never carried out.
Taken together, the FIJ investigation maps a concession worth up to $1 billion to a set of players whose combined regulatory and legal histories span three continents and more than two decades of enforcement actions, settlements and probes. Whether those histories will affect the project's execution or its regulatory standing in Nigeria remains to be seen.
