They’re referred to The Canadian Kardashians. For sisters, Kiran And Jyoti Matharoo, living the good life was their profession. So when they were arrested in Nigerian for allegedly blackmailing and extorting Nigerian billionaire Femi Otedola in 2016, their good life grounded to a halt.
Nearly two years after the incident that saw them held behind bars for 18 days, the sisters are recounting their ordeal in a tell-all to New York Times, blaming the Nigerian mogul for orchestrating a worldwide travel ban on them. Kiran, the younger of the two, was arrested in Italy a few months after they departed Nigeria- they were allowed to leave temporarily after they released a video apology to Otedola. Once they were back in their home country, they retracted their apology. The New York Times quotes them as saying they only apologized because it was the only way they would be released.
“I felt this was our only chance… We got everything we wanted by asking nicely. Why would we ruin that?”’, says Kiran.
Her trip in September of 2017 led to a 40-day detention in Italy and was being processed for extradition to face trial in Nigeria. Both their names were listed on Interpol’s wanted list. Fortunately Nigeria never actually filed the necessary extradition documents and she was released but still remained a fugitive.
Thus they started the process of clearing their names and appealing to Interpol to delete them from the list. That didn’t happen until June of 2018.
The sisters have no apologies for their chosen lifestyle. “There’s always going to be a guy saying, ‘Let me spoil you,’ who wants to fly us somewhere”, they said to NYT.
Although Otedola never gave a reaction to all the allegations, the Matharoo sisters blame him solely for their ordeal. “Kiran said Mr Otedola was furious that she had spurned his entreaties to rekindle their relationship and used them as scapegoats to deflect attention from the website’s embarrassing rumours”.
Read the full piece here.
