US Court Orders FBI, Anti-drug Agency To Release Investigation On Tinubu
US court orders FBI, anti-drug agency to release investigation dossiers on Tinubu
The judge, Beryl Howell, made the order on Tuesday, saying that protecting the information from public disclosure is “neither logical nor plausible.”
byKabir Yusuf April 13, 2025 Reading Time:
The United States District Court for the District of Columbia has ordered top US law enforcement agencies to release confidential information generated on President Bola Tinubu during a “purported federal investigation in the 1990s.”
The judge, Beryl Howell, made the order on Tuesday, saying that protecting the information from public disclosure is “neither logical nor plausible.”
An American, Aaron Greenspan, had filed a suit in June 2023 under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) against the Executive Office for US Attorneys, Department of State, Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
In his complaint, Mr Greenspan accused the law enforcement agencies of violating the FOIA by failing to release within the statutory time “documents relating to purported federal investigations into” President Tinubu and one Abiodun Agbele.
Between 2022 and 2023, Mr Greenspan filed 12 FOIA requests with six different US government agencies and components seeking information about a joint investigation conducted by the FBI, IRS, DEA, and the US Attorney’s Offices for the Northern District of Indiana and Northern District of Illinois.
According to Mr Greenspan, the records being requested involved charging decisions on the activities, including money laundering, of a Chicago heroin ring that operated in the early 1990s.
In each FOIA request, the American sought criminal investigative records about four named individuals “allegedly associated with the drug ring: Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Lee Andrew Edwards, Mueez Abegboyega Akande, and Abiodun Agbele.”
After the requests, all five US agencies issued “Glomar responses”, refusing to confirm or deny whether the requested records exist.
Mr Greenspan contested those responses at the Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy (“OIP”). The OIP, however, affirmed the agencies’ refusal to confirm or deny the existence of the requested records.
Tinubu and Agbele’s records cleared for release
Five of Mr Greenspan’s FOIA requests are still at issue in the parties’ pending cross-motions for summary judgement.
During the hearing, the plaintiff agreed to narrow the issues for summary judgement briefing to defendants’ Glomar responses, redactions, and withholdings as to Mr Tinubu and Mr Agbele only.
This is why in its judgement, the judge ordered that the remaining parties, apart from CIA, to file jointly, by 2 May, a report on the status of any outstanding issues in this case, as described in the accompanying order.
How drug ring member was busted and link to Tinubu
Part of the documents submitted by Mr Greenspan to court to back his FOIA.
(NAN)
