EXCLUSIVE
By Hugh Dunnett, Crime Correspondent

Prime Minister David Cameron told the Queen that Nigeria was the most corrupt country in the world after never receiving the $1.5 million dollars he was promised in an email.

The Suffolk Gazette can reveal Mr Cameron gave Mrs Miriam Abacha his personal bank account details after she emailed him out of the blue to say her late husband, who worked as a lawyer for a Nigerian oil company, had died in a car accident.

She wanted someone to look after the $10 million fortune her husband had somehow amassed – and that person could keep $1.5 million of it as their part of the deal.

But when Mr Cameron replied with all his information, included his bank account details, passport number and date of birth, $10,000 in “administrative fees” mysteriously disappeared from his current account, and he never saw the Nigerian cash – or heard from Mrs Abacha again.

Furious, he told Her Majesty and the Archbishop of Canterbury yesterday, at a reception at Buckingham Palace to mark her 90th birthday, that Nigeria was “fantastically corrupt”.

The prime minister made the cutting remarks ahead the government’s anti-corruption summit tomorrow, at which Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, will deliver a speech entitled “Why we must tackle corruption together”.

Mr Cameron told a friend: “I got this email from a nice sounding young lady whose husband had died. She just needed someone to look after his fortune for a bit. I didn’t like to ask how he came by $10 million, but the $1.5 million I was being offered sounded too good to be true.

“I was happy to help, after all we’re all in this together, and poor Mrs Abacha sounded desperate. But I am now $10,000 out-of-pocket and she is not replying to my emails. It’s a disgrace.”

Specialists at Suffolk Police were called in to track Mrs Abacha down, but she is one of 1,750 alleged multi-millionaires whose husbands died in Nigerian car accidents this year alone.