Biography of Diepreye Alamieyeseigha Diepreye Alamieyeseigha was born on November 16, 1952 in Amassoma, Ogboin North Local Government Area, Bayelsa State. He attended high school at Bishop Dimeari Grammer School, Yenagoa. He joined the Nigerian Defence Academy as an officer cadet in 1974, then joined the Nigerian Air Force, where he served in the Department of Logistics and Supply. He held various positions in the Air Force in Enugu, Makurdi, Ikeja and Kaduna. Alamieyeseigha retired from the Air Force in 1992 as squadron leader. After leaving the Air Force, Alamieyeseigha became the sole director of Pabod Supplies Port Harcourt. He later became Chief of Budget, Planning, Research and Development of National Fertilizer Company (NAFCON). Diepreye Alamieyeseigha was elected as governor of Bayelsa state in May 1999 as a member of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP). He was reelected in 2003. Diepreye Alamieyeseigha was arrested in London on charges of money laundering in September 2005. At the time of his arrest, the Metropolitan police found around £ 1m in cash at his home in London. Later they found a total of £ 1.8 million ($ 3.2 million) in cash and bank accounts. He has been found to own real estate in London worth an alleged £ 10 million. He jumped bail in December 2005 in the United Kingdom by allegedly concealing himself as a woman, although Alamieyeseigha denies this claim. Alamieyeseigha was dismissed on charges of corruption, on 9 December 2005. In July 26, 2007, Alamieyeseigha pleaded guilty before a Nigerian court on a six counts charges and was sentenced to two years in prison on each count; however, because the sentences were configured to run at the same time and was calculated from the point of arrest to nearly two years before sentencing, the actual sentence was relatively short. Many of his assets were ordered to be forfeited to the Bayelsa state government. According to Alamieyeseigha, he only pleaded guilty because of his age and would have fought the charges assuming he was younger. In December 2009, the federal government hired a British law firm to help have four expensive properties acquired by Alamieyeseigha in London returned to Nigeria. Alamieyeseigha had bought one of these properties for £ 1,750,000.00 in July 2003, upon cash payment. Peter Solomon Diepreye Alamieyeseigha used it as his residence in London, and as the registered office of Solomon and Peters Inc. On June 28, 2012, the United States (US) Department of Justice (DoJ) announced that it had executed an order of forfeiture of assets of $ 401,931 on a fund brokerage in Massachusetts, traceable to Alamieyeseigha. US prosecutors filed court papers in April 2011 directed to the substance of Massachusetts and Maryland brokerage house $ 600,000 alleging they were proceeds of corruption. A motion for default judgment and civil forfeiture was granted by a federal district judge in Massachusetts in early June 2012. On March 12, 2013, Alamieyeseigha was pardoned by President Goodluck Jonathan, but the presidential pardon received a lot of criticisms from many Nigerians. Alamieyeseigha was widely reported to have died of cardiac arrest at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital on October 10, 2015. However, in a later interview, Bayelsa State Commissioner for Information revealed that He died of "complications from high blood pressure and diabetes that affected his kidney."
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