FACT CHECK… Is Dangote moving his assets out of Nigeria?

Claim: A viral picture claims Dangote has opened a new family office in New York and invested 60 percent of his assets in the US.

A viral picture on WhatsApp shows an image of Aliko Dangote and a quote from him saying; “I’m opening a family office in NewYork city to invest 60% of my assets in the United States over the next few years to protect my family wealth in long term.”

Sources: The picture was traced to Twitter, where it was shared on 23 May, 2021 with a link to an old post of Guardian Nigeria published January 2020.

Also, the post was traced to a Facebook profile which uploading the picture in March 2020.

All of these posts advise Nigerians to think of plan B on how to get out of Nigeria.

Verification:

The video from which the quote was extracted was uploaded by David Rubenstein, a US billionaire who is known for interviewing billionaires around the world. The video was uploaded in January 2020. The Guardian Newspaper report was an excerpt from the video.

True, Dangote said he will be opening a family office in NewYork city. But what is a family office?

Investopedia defines a family office as a private wealth management advisory that serves very few wealthy families. They offer financial services, provide planning, charitable giving advice, concierge, and other comprehensive services.

In the video, Dangote made it clear that the NewYork office won’t be the first of its kind for the Dangote group. There is an office in London which has been operating for the last 30 years.

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He said he is opening the family office in NewYork to preserve the family wealth because “In Africa, you know we have issues of devaluation, so we want to really preserve some of the family’s wealth,” Dangote told Bloomberg TV’s David Rubenstein Show.

Dangote did not specifically say he will invest 60 percent of his wealth in the United States. While answering Rubenstein’s questions on why he has adverts outside Africa without any business there, he said “We have a company that has revenue of four billion dollars. In the next two years we will have a company that has revenue of about 30 billion dollars, so with that we will have quite a lot of money. What we are trying to do is to use a major percentage of the money to invest outside Africa and use about 40 percent of it to continue to invest in Africa because we have invested very heavily in Africa.”

Conclusion: At no point during the interview did he say the whole sentences in the viral picture at a go. Also, he did not mean that Dangote is leaving Nigeria or Africa like many of the posts suggested.

Verdict: The post is misleading.

By Ibraheem Alawode…

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