A British high street solicitor laundered “huge sums of money” in bribes to Nigeria via accounts in Switzerland and Monaco, an extradition hearing was told yesterday.

Jeffrey Tesler, 61, faces jail in the US if sent there and convicted. He claims extradition would be unfair because he might also face prosecution in Britain, where the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has been conducting its own prolonged investigation.

Tesler, who is claimed to have been the London-based “bagman” for US construction firms, denies that his alleged behaviour has sufficient connection to America to justify his being flown there for trial.

At Horseferry Road magistrates court his QC, William Clegg, said the US was not the victim. “This is an offence directed against the country of Nigeria,” he said.

David Perry QC, on behalf of the US government, claimed that Tesler’s conduct had “clear links with the US”. He told the London court: “The SFO has ceded jurisdiction to the United States.”

He said US contractors received the benefit of corrupt payments totalling $132m (£79m) transmitted by Tesler via Chase Manhattan, a bank in New York. In one of the largest penalties in US corporate history, the construction giant Halliburton and associated companies have already paid out $579m for breaching anti-corruption laws over the Nigerian scandal.

Bribes were paid out over a period of a decade on behalf of a consortium that was handed contracts worth $6bn to construct liquefied natural gas plants at Bonny Island, on the coast of the oil-rich west African state. The Texas-based US chief executive of the subsidiary concerned, Jack Stanley, faces a potential seven-year jail sentence after pleading guilty to creaming off kickbacks from the bribe money.

The US authorities say two Britons played key roles: Tesler and another British resident, Wojcieh Chodan, who was an executive at Halliburton’s UK subsidiary company MW Kellogg, headquartered in west London. Chodan faces separate extradition proceedings in the new year.

The entire Nigerian bribery scheme was organised through London, according to the US authorities, taking advantage of Britain’s weak laws against overseas corruption. Labour ministers waved through a British loan guarantee for part of the deal in 2003, describing it as an example of “sound financial judgment”. Cash flowed down an elaborate route, involving a subsidiary registered in Madeira, a Tesler company registered in Gibraltar and bank accounts in the Netherlands.

Perry said conspiring to bribe Nigerian officials could amount to a crime in Britain as well as the US, so extradition could take place under normal legal rules.

Britain’s willingness to deport its own citizens to the US for trial has caused controversy. Many countries will not extradite their own citizens, but the government signed a 2003 treaty with the US making extradition easier.

Gary McKinnon, a computer hacker who suffers from a form of autism according to his supporters, is making a last-ditch plea to the home secretary to avoid extradition for allegedly hacking into Pentagon computers and disrupting them.