Nwude impersonated Paul Ogwuma, then Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, and successfully convinced Sakaguchi, a then director at Brazil's Banco Noroeste, to "invest" in a new airport in the nation's capital, Abuja, in exchange for a $10 million commission. In August 1997, the Spanish Banco Santander wanted to take over the Banco Noroeste Brazil. The fraud was uncovered after a December 1997 joint board meeting, in which an official from Santander inquired about why a large sum of money, two-fifths of Noroeste's total value and half of their capital, was sitting in the Cayman Islands unmonitored.
