Bamise and Elizabeth Ajetunmobi obtained Caribbean citizenship months before Imagine Global collapsed, but later court proceedings, an international arrest, and an unresolved fugitive case produced a more complicated outcome than the original headlines suggested.
WASHINGTON — When Imagine Global Solutions stopped meeting its obligations during 2021, Nigerian investors who had entrusted the company with life savings, business capital, and family money quickly confronted allegations that as much as twenty-two billion naira had disappeared.
The outrage intensified when passport images circulating online indicated that founders Bamise and Elizabeth Ajetunmobi, together with members of their family, had obtained citizenship from Antigua and Barbuda several months before the investment business publicly unraveled.
Antigua and Barbuda’s Citizenship by Investment Unit later confirmed that the couple received citizenship through the country’s investment program in April 2021, saying its external screening found no adverse information when it examined their applications.
Prime Minister Gaston Browne responded with an unusually blunt parliamentary warning, promising that the country would not become a refuge for people accused of defrauding investors and that authorities would intercept the couple if they attempted to enter.
The later history complicates the original story, because Bamise was eventually arrested in Côte d’Ivoire and returned to Nigeria for criminal proceedings. At the same time, Elizabeth remained at large in the latest reliable reporting, and no public record reviewed confirms a final revocation of their citizenship.
A lending business built on extraordinary returns
Imagine Global presented itself as a microcredit business that pooled money from investors and then provided unsecured financing to traders, market women, and smaller enterprises that frequently struggled to obtain affordable credit from conventional Nigerian banks.
The company reportedly charged borrowers about 220 percent while promising investors returns of up to 100 percent, an unusually generous arrangement whose sustainability depended on loan performance, collection discipline, operating costs, and the continued arrival of investable funds.
Bamise, a former banker, initially raised money from professional contacts and acquaintances before leaving conventional employment to expand the venture. At the same time, Elizabeth was publicly identified as its chair, and Bamise served as managing director.
Imagine Global claimed a customer base of ninety thousand Nigerians. However, that figure included borrowers and other users rather than indicating that ninety thousand people invested money, making the exact victim population difficult to verify independently.
What can be documented more precisely is that numerous investors brought claims involving very large deposits, including individual exposures reaching hundreds of millions or even several billion naira, while many smaller customers described losses through social media groups.
The collapse and the twenty-two-billion-naira allegation
By October 2021, Imagine Global’s Lagos office had closed, investors said expected payments had stopped, and efforts to reach the couple had been unsuccessful, prompting widespread allegations that they had left Nigeria while billions of naira remained unaccounted for.
Early news reports placed the disputed total at twenty billion or twenty-two billion naira, then equivalent to roughly fifty-three million dollars. Still, those figures represented aggregated allegations rather than a single audited loss calculation or final criminal Judgment.
That qualification is important because later civil and criminal proceedings used different totals, claimant groups, charging instruments, and legal standards, meaning the twenty-two-billion-naira headline should not be treated as interchangeable with every amount subsequently presented in court.
Some investors had signed contracts promising monthly returns and repayment of principal at maturity. At the same time, the collapse left them pursuing frozen accounts, real estate, company assets, and any other property available to satisfy contractual obligations.
The passports that surfaced online
Images of Antigua and Barbuda passports issued to the Ajetunmobis and their children appeared online shortly after reports of the collapse, showing issuance dates in April and early May 2021, about six months before the controversy became public.
The disclosure was not, as some summaries later claimed, a formal parliamentary leak, because the available record indicates passport images circulated through journalists and social media before the prime minister addressed the allegations in Parliament.
Antigua’s Citizenship by Investment Unit then confirmed that Bamise and Elizabeth had applied through the investment program and received citizenship in April following what the unit described as an intense internal examination supported by a global due-diligence provider.
According to the unit, no Interpol Red Notice, adverse media, criminal case, civil litigation, or regulatory concern associated with the couple or their businesses had been identified when citizenship was approved, and the investment allegations emerged publicly only afterward.
What the timing proves and what it does not
Receiving citizenship months before a business collapse naturally raised suspicion that the couple had anticipated the crisis, particularly because passport acquisition can expand travel choices, residence rights, consular access, and the ability to reorganize personal or corporate affairs internationally.
Nevertheless, the issuance dates alone do not prove that the Ajetunmobis purchased citizenship to facilitate flight, because applicants commonly begin investment-migration planning months before approval and the public evidence does not establish their stated intention during the application process.
The record also does not establish that the Antigua and Barbuda passports were actually presented during any departure from Nigeria, subsequent travel, or Bamise’s attempted journey from Côte d’Ivoire, so claims about operational use require evidence beyond possession.
What the chronology does prove is narrower and still consequential: the couple possessed an additional nationality before Imagine Global’s obligations became a national scandal, creating a reputational emergency for the Caribbean government that had recently approved them.
For citizenship authorities, that sequence shows the limits of point-in-time screening, because a clean database result on approval day cannot guarantee that undisclosed liabilities, misconduct, or rapidly developing legal problems will not surface months later.
Antigua’s prime minister draws a public line.
After learning about the passport images and Nigerian allegations, Browne said systems were in place to capture the couple if they tried to enter Antigua and Barbuda, while stressing that investor citizenship was designed to attract capital rather than shelter alleged criminals.
In the widely reported address, Browne declared that Antigua and Barbuda would not become a “refuge for scamps” and said people who violated laws abroad should ultimately be repatriated, even if they managed to secure temporary refuge elsewhere.
Contemporary reporting on Browne’s parliamentary response describes a political assurance and operational instruction. Still, the available material does not demonstrate that the prime minister issued a formal published decree automatically canceling citizenship or bypassing ordinary legal procedures.
That distinction matters because arrest, immigration detention, extradition, deportation, passport cancellation, and deprivation of citizenship are separate legal actions, each requiring an identifiable authority, factual basis, and process rather than a single political declaration.
The government’s response therefore showed reputational urgency. Yet, it also highlighted the awkward position created when a state recognizes someone as its citizen while simultaneously promising to capture and repatriate that person over allegations arising in another country.
The civil Judgment in Lagos
Nigerian investors moved rapidly to preserve assets, obtaining court orders that restricted twenty-one banks from releasing funds and prevented the couple, their companies, or related parties from disposing of identified properties while litigation proceeded in Lagos.
In July 2022, the Lagos State High Court entered Judgment for twenty-seven claimants and ordered the Ajetunmobis and their Imagine Global companies to pay approximately eighteen-point-nine billion naira, together with contractual interest arising from the disputed investments.
The Judgment combined roughly fifteen-point-five billion naira awarded to one claimant group with approximately three-point-three billion naira awarded to another, while earlier freezing orders had covered bank balances and potentially recoverable property inside and outside Nigeria.
This was a civil Judgment enforcing investment agreements and outstanding obligations, not a criminal conviction determining guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, although it materially strengthened investors’ legal position and established enforceable liability against the named defendants.
Bamise’s arrest changed the case.
Bamise was later arrested in Côte d’Ivoire while reportedly preparing to board a flight to the United Kingdom, then returned to Nigeria and placed in police custody before being produced in court in March 2023.
The return did not involve Browne’s threatened intervention at an Antiguan border, and it demonstrated that additional citizenship could not prevent detention when law-enforcement cooperation, travel intelligence, and a requesting country’s criminal process converged in a third jurisdiction.
Federal prosecutors subsequently arraigned Bamise and Imagine Global on fraud-related charges. At the same time, he pleaded not guilty and pursued bail under conditions that included depositing five billion naira and surrendering his international passport to the court.
Reporting during 2024 said Bamise remained in correctional custody after failing to satisfy the bail conditions and had asked the Nigerian Attorney General’s Office to consider an out-of-court resolution. However, prosecutors requested time to evaluate that approach.
By June 2025, the latest detailed court reporting described testimony beginning in a revised prosecution involving conspiracy, obtaining money by pretenses, and fraud allegations, with Bamise maintaining his defense and no final criminal verdict reported.
Elizabeth’s unresolved status
Elizabeth was charged alongside her husband in Nigerian proceedings. Still, she remained at large in the latest reliable accounts, leaving unanswered questions about her location, current travel documents, representation, and whether authorities had initiated any successful return process.
Her absence also requires careful language, because being charged does not establish criminal guilt, and the public record reviewed for this article does not contain a final criminal Judgment against her following a trial at which she appeared.
The civil Judgment nevertheless applied to both spouses and their companies, establishing financial liability to the successful claimants even while criminal allegations remained governed by different evidence, procedural safeguards, and burdens of proof.
No reliable public announcement for this article establishes that Antigua and Barbuda formally revoked either spouse’s citizenship, despite early reports that deprivation might follow once Nigerian authorities provided official evidence supporting the allegations.
That uncertainty is itself a governance issue, because citizenship programs lose credibility when governments announce strong screening and enforcement principles but leave the eventual status of controversial approvals unclear to citizens, partner countries, and regulated institutions.
A test of Antigua’s screening claims
The official Antigua and Barbuda program rules now describe applicants as ineligible when they provide false information, face criminal investigation, create national-security concerns, risk bringing the country into disrepute, or possess certain serious unpardoned convictions.
The same rules state that citizenship may be deprived when registration resulted from fraud, false representation, or willful concealment of material facts. However, applying those provisions requires evidence about what an applicant knew, disclosed, or misrepresented during the original process.
Because the public allegations emerged after approval, the central due-diligence question is not simply whether a criminal database contained the couple’s names, but whether their financial profile and business claims merited enhanced independent verification before citizenship was granted.
A thorough commercial review could examine audited accounts, loan books, default rates, promised returns, banking flows, tax filings, beneficial ownership, investor liabilities, regulatory permissions, litigation exposure, and whether the applicant’s declared wealth corresponded with reliable evidence.
The limits of database due diligence
Citizenship units often rely on police certificates, sanctions databases, litigation searches, adverse-media reviews, Interpol information, and commercial intelligence reports, all of which can be valuable but still miss misconduct that has not yet produced a public record.
That vulnerability is especially acute for founders of privately held financial businesses, because apparent entrepreneurial success may coexist with opaque liabilities, related-party transfers, weak governance, overstated receivables, or returns funded through sources invisible outside the company.
The Ajetunmobi case therefore illustrates why “no adverse information found” is not equivalent to affirmative proof of integrity, solvency, or lawful business conduct, particularly where applicants control the records used to explain their wealth and commercial history.
Programs can reduce that risk by requiring independently audited financial statements, regulator confirmation, direct bank references, litigation declarations, source-of-funds tracing, interviews, and contractual authority to conduct ongoing reviews after citizenship is approved.
Governments also need clear post-approval protocols that trigger reassessment when credible allegations arise, allowing decisions about passport restrictions or citizenship deprivation to proceed through documented law rather than improvised political statements during a public controversy.
Citizenship does not extinguish legal exposure.
The Ajetunmobis’ additional nationality did not erase Nigerian courts’ jurisdiction over contracts, companies, investors, or alleged conduct in Nigeria, and it did not prevent assets from being frozen or a civil Judgment from being entered.
Nor did citizenship guarantee Bamise unrestricted travel, because his arrest in Côte d’Ivoire and return to Nigeria show that mobility advantages remain contingent upon border checks, international cooperation, document use, local law, and the existence of enforceable requests.
Citizenship can influence diplomatic assistance, admission rights, and some extradition questions. Still, it generally does not make an accused person immune from prosecution or prevent another country from detaining that person under its own procedures.
The outcome also demonstrates why passport possession should not be described as proof that money moved internationally or that assets were hidden, since those separate allegations require banking records, corporate evidence, transactions, or judicial findings independent of travel documents.
In this case, the strongest supported conclusion is that the passports expanded available options and created a serious due-diligence controversy. At the same time, later court and enforcement actions showed that those options did not eliminate accountability mechanisms.
The difference between lawful planning and escape
Second citizenship remains a legitimate planning tool for families seeking residence security, business access, education, or diversified mobility, provided applications disclose true identities, commercial histories, litigation, investigations, funding sources, and all other material facts requested by authorities.
Guidance comparing lawful citizenship planning with accelerated investor programs argues that durable status depends upon transparent compliance. However, every applicant should independently and carefully verify promotional claims with qualified counsel and the issuing government.
Anyone evaluating a legal second-passport service should demand written confirmation of governmental authority, traceable payments, independent advice, accurate application records, and screening procedures that reject fugitives, forged documentation, or efforts to obstruct valid legal proceedings.
The essential distinction is not whether a person seeks greater privacy or mobility, but whether the resulting status remains anchored to an authentic biography and is used consistently with criminal law, tax duties, court orders, sanctions, and financial-reporting obligations.
The lesson for Caribbean investment programs
For Antigua and Barbuda, the controversy exposed a gap between screening that found no adverse record in early 2021 and an investment crisis that became public only months later, followed by civil liability and criminal proceedings in Nigeria.
For investors, it showed how polished social-impact claims and consistent early payments can create confidence without guaranteeing that promised returns are supported by sustainable lending operations, adequate reserves, or independently verified company assets.
For policymakers, the case demonstrates that citizenship due diligence cannot end with watchlist searches, because business-model analysis and continuous monitoring are indispensable whenever an applicant’s wealth derives from taking, managing, or investing other people’s money.
Browne’s declaration that Antigua would not shelter alleged wrongdoers provided a forceful political response. Still, the program’s credibility ultimately depends upon transparent legal outcomes, including whether citizenship reviews occurred and what standards controlled any resulting decision.
The Ajetunmobi story therefore ends not with a golden passport delivering permanent refuge, but with one spouse returned to Nigerian custody, another still facing unresolved allegations abroad, investors holding a major civil Judgment, and the citizenship question remaining publicly unsettled.
