The Federal Government has started
tracing looted Nigerian funds to foreign nations with the aim of
recovering and repatriating them.
The Federal Government specifically
targets the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Switzerland and
other European jurisdictions where it believes corrupt officials have
been stashing public funds.
This move came on the heels of the
declaration by President Muhammadu Buhari on his first day in Aso Villa
office that he inherited an almost empty treasury from his predecessor,
Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, thus vowing that his administration would recover
all the looted funds stashed in foreign banks by corrupt Nigerians.
“The next three months may be hard, but
billions of dollars can be recovered, and we will do our best,” the
President was quoted as saying in a statement signed by his Special
Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina.
Some of the countries where looted funds
from Nigeria have been kept in the past include Liechtenstein,
Luxembourg, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Others are France, Germany, British Virgin Islands and other tax havens
spread across the globe.
Adesina, who confirmed the move in an exclusive interview with Saturday PUNCH
on Thursday, said, the search for the looted funds will not be limited
to these countries but anywhere in the world where they may be hidden.
He said, “The search will not only cover
UK, US, Switzerland, Germany and other known havens for Nigerian looted
funds but will cover everywhere under the sun. Anywhere and everywhere
that the looted funds are, we have an assurance from the United States
of America to assist us to repatriate these funds from anywhere under
the sun.”
Saturday PUNCH learnt that the
Federal Government’s investigation was meant to identify the individuals
who engaged in corrupt practices and ascertain the sums of money
involved with a view to repatriating them.
One of our correspondents also learnt
that anti-corruption agencies will play a prominent role in the exercise
targeted at corrupt government officials in the recent past
administration and their private sector collaborators, among others.
To this end, Adeniyi told Saturday PUNCH
that the Federal Government is planning to engage the services of
foreign private investigators to help trace and find looted funds
belonging to the people of Nigeria.
“Everything that needs to be done to get
all those funds repatriated will be done, including engaging private
investigators,” the Presidential spokesperson added.
Buhari had lamented that officials of
the recent past government jettisoned all financial and administrative
instructions put in place in parastatals and agencies while embracing
impunity, lack of accountability and financial recklessness in the
management of national resources.
This, the President decried, had thrown the country into financial crisis.
Saturday PUNCH learnt that
foreign search, which is expected to be thorough, will, among others, be
directed at foreign banks with the ultimate aim of getting
incontrovertible facts and figures that can aid the government in
collaboration with the US and other members of the G7 nations to recover
stolen funds stashed abroad.
Adesina said the identification of
foreign banks being used to stash stolen funds was one of the mandates
given to Buhari during a meeting he had with President Barak Obama at
the recent G-7 summit in Germany.
He said, “When the President met with
the G7, the promise that the American President gave him was that
Nigeria should just provide all the facts, the figures, the statistics,
including the banks.
“He promised that if Nigeria could make the information available, then the US will help in recovering the stolen funds.”
When asked specifically if the Federal
Government had started identifying the banks, the presidential spokesman
said, “Yes. In fact, the President said the government will spend the
next three months identifying banks, individuals and monies that have
been ferried out of this country.
“The assurance the President has given
is that within the next three months, we have to concentrate on getting
those monies back to the government coffers,” he added.
Buhari had said early in the week that
his administration had received firm assurances of cooperation from the
US and other countries in his quest to recover and repatriate funds
stolen from Nigeria.
Buhari, while granting audience to
members of the Northern Traditional Rulers Council led by the Sultan of
Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar III, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, had
said that it was now up to Nigeria to provide the international
community with the facts and figures needed to drive the recovery
effort.
He said he would be busy, in the next three months, getting the facts that would help in recovering the stolen funds.
“In the next three months, our
administration will be busy getting those facts and the figures to help
us recover our stolen funds in foreign countries,’’ the President had
said.
Saturday PUNCH learnt that the
Federal Government may also go after property owned by public fund
looters in London, Dubai, US, Saudi Arabia and other choice
international real estate markets where Nigerians are known to be some
of the biggest buyers.
It was also learnt that the Department
for International Development, a UK government department responsible
for administering overseas aid, had alerted the President on over N1.3tn
stolen during the last administration, where it is kept and who the
beneficiaries are.
This money, a source close to the DFID
said, is a low hanging fruit that the President can pluck during his
first six months in the office with the help of the UK, US, and other G7
members without hassle.
“This was one of the agreement reached
between President Buhari and the G7 countries when the former attended
their meeting in Germany,” the DFID source told Saturday PUNCH.
The US in March 2014 had ordered a
freeze on $458m in assets stolen by the late Head of State, Gen. Sani
Abacha, and his accomplices. Abacha died in office in 1998.
The US Justice Department named two bank
accounts in the Bailiwick of Jersey and two other accounts in France as
depositories of $313m and $145m Abacha loot respectively. Four other
investment portfolios and three bank accounts in Britain were also
frozen, with an estimated value of at least $100m.
The US also named nine financial
institutions – Citibank, Chase Manhattan Bank and Morgan Guaranty Trust
Company, now JPMorgan Chase, and New York-based units of Britain’s
Barclays Bank and Germany’s Commerz bank – as places where some of the
Abacha loots were laundered.
Similarly, the Crown Prosecution Service
in the United Kingdom had estimated former governor of Delta State,
James Onanefe Ibori’s loot stolen to be around $250m.
Ibori, who is serving jail term for
corruption charges in a UK prison, was said to have bought six property
in London, including a six-bedroom house with indoor pool in Hampstead
for £2.2m and a flat opposite the nearby Abbey Road recording studios.
There was also a property in Dorset, a £3.2m mansion in South Africa and
further real estate in Nigeria.
He also owned a fleet of armoured Range
Rovers costing £600,000, a £120,000 Bentley, a £300,000 Mercedes
Maybach, and a private jet for £12m.
President Buhari said the last
administration mismanaged the economy while stating that it was a
disgrace that state governments in the country can’t pay salaries;
hence, the need to recover looted funds wherever they may be hidden.
Commenting on the development, a former
Minister of Finance and elder statesman, Chief Olu Falae, commended the
move and described it as laudable and desirable.
Falae expressed the belief that looted
funds could be recovered because the whole world is now talking about
promotion of transparency in governance.
“If some monies could be recovered from
Abacha loot in the recent past, then it will be possible to recover
looted funds from others as well,” he said.
The former minister, however, urged the President to follow due process while going after the looted funds.
Falae said, “It is just that we have to
follow due process because we cannot force the countries where the
looted funds were stashed to return them because they are not subject to
our authorities. But if we follow due process, it might be possible for
us to recover those monies.
“The monies should not just be
recovered; they should be used to develop the country. There should be
no exception; anybody who has looted the public fund should be made to
return it. Not only monies stashed abroad should be recovered, those
stolen and kept in the country should also be recovered. I wish the
President good luck in his move to achieve this initiative.”
Also, the Convener of Coalition Against
Corrupt Leaders, Mr. Debo Adeniran, asked Buhari to follow the normal
channel through mutual legal assistant treaty that Nigeria has with the
countries where such monies were stashed, if he really wants the stolen
funds repatriated.
He said, “The President may succeed if
he invokes the letter of the mutual legal assistant treaty, but I am not
sure Nigeria has such with Switzerland although that country has been
voluntarily returning Abacha loot to Nigeria.
“There are several other countries that
may not be willing to return the volume of the money that was kept in
their banks by the looters except there is international status that
Nigeria can invoke to compel them to repatriate the fund.
“Nigeria has to go through legal process
except it was one of the wish list that Buhari presented to the G7
countries. We have expressed it in some fora that we expected that
Buhari would make it the top of his agenda at the G7 summit in Germany
that he should get the G7 to cooperate with Nigeria on how not to allow
looted funds by Nigeria’s public officials to be kept in their financial
institutions.”
Adeniran also asked Buhari to prevail on
the governments of the countries where the public funds were being
stashed to assist Nigeria to expose those behind the practice.
He said, “Property acquired in those
countries must also be investigated and if it is discovered that the
property were procured through proceeds of corruption, they should be
confiscated on behalf of Nigeria, sell them and repatriate the money to
Nigeria.”
The National Publicity Secretary of
Afenifere Renewal Group, a pan-Yoruba organisation, Mr. Kunle Famoriyo,
expressed his support for Buhari’s move, which he described as a
positive one for the country.
However, he blamed the US and other
Western countries for doing nothing in the past to stop their banks from
receiving stolen funds from corrupt individuals and corporations in
Nigeria, while calling for the punishment of those found culpable.
He said, “It is our hope that something
positive will come out of it considering that the banks in the US and
some other Western countries were part of the laundering. They collected
money from corrupt Nigerians and as far as we know, their countries did
nothing to make sure the banks do not collect stolen money from
Nigeria.
“Those found culpable in looting our
public funds should be tried in the law courts. It’s not enough to
collect the stolen funds without any sanctions meted out to them to
serve as deterrent to others. Punishments meted out to corrupt
individuals are also not commensurate with the crime committed, and this
should be corrected.”
In addition, Famoriyo advised the
Federal Government to restructure the country and enforce true
federalism, which he said, would empower the states.
He said, “Development should be from
bottom up and the other way around. What we need is true federalism;
this unitary system cannot help us because it’s not sustainable. It’s a
system that encourages states to be going to the Federal Government
every month with cap in hand.”
The House of Representatives yesterday
failed to elect leaders as members went into a rowdy session over issues
bothering on a letter from the National Chairman of the ruling All
Progressives Congress, APC.