The London Southwark Crown Court has been told that the abrupt manner the asset confiscation hearing of former Delta State Governor, James Ibori, ended in London after the prosecution and defence had closed their cases and filed their final briefs, and the order for retrial will have cost implications for the court and the British taxpayer.
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Ibori's lead counsel, Mr. Ivan Krolick, made this clear to the court for granting the crown prosecution's request to halt the assets confiscation proceedings after three weeks of exhaustive legal arguments.
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He told Judge Anthony Pitts that "there will be cost implications."
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Preparations for the abruptly ended proceedings started in January leading to the last three weeks in September and a review of 63,000 pages of prosecution papers by the defence team.
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The arguments over-shot the assigned time frame by a week.
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Still, pushing aside all the efforts of the defence team to present the position of the defendant against the confiscation request order being made by the prosecution should indeed have cost implications, which will be borne by British taxpayers, who will be paying for the crown prosecution's shoddy preparation and lack of tangible evidence to support their confiscation claims and accusation against the former Delta State governor.