President Bola Tinubu has asked a United States court to stop the release of government records relating to past allegations of drug trafficking involving him.
The records are being sought by US transparency activist Aaron Greenspan, who has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against several US government agencies, including the Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Greenspan is seeking documents connected to investigations involving Mr Tinubu, including the FBI’s complete file on the Nigerian president and interview records contained in FBI Form 302 documents from 1992 and 1993.
The case also involves records reportedly linked to a 1993 civil forfeiture proceeding in the US concerning about $460,000 associated with Mr Tinubu.
The Nigerian president has consistently denied wrongdoing.
In court documents filed on Friday and shared with Channels Television by his lawyers, Christopher W Carmichael, Victor P Henderson and Oluwole O Afolabi, Mr Tinubu argued that releasing the records could infringe on his privacy rights.
His legal team said information submitted during the earlier forfeiture proceedings did not disclose details of any potential criminal investigation or its outcome.
The lawyers argued that Greenspan was seeking the records precisely because the information contained in them was not already in the public domain.
They also maintained that the disclosure of some information in the past did not extinguish Mr Tinubu’s privacy interest in other material contained in the government files.
The lawyers cited previous US Supreme Court rulings in support of their position that individuals can retain privacy rights over government investigative files even where some information from those files has already become public.
They argued that previous references to an investigation did not amount to public disclosure of the contents of the investigative records.
“Regardless of the prior disclosure in the forfeiture proceeding, Intervenor retains a privacy interest in potential disclosure of the investigative files sought by Plaintiff,” the lawyers said in the court filing.
Mr Tinubu’s legal team also disputed Greenspan’s arguments concerning the FBI’s search for records, the DEA’s records index and other issues relating to documents that had been withheld or redacted.
The lawyers argued that Greenspan’s broader objective was to obtain government records containing Mr Tinubu’s name.
They urged the court to reject the FOIA request where, they argued, the records were protected from disclosure under US privacy laws.
