The Federal Government and Switzerland have agreed on the
repatriation of $321 million looted from Nigeria by next month.
The Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari
on Justice Reforms, Mrs Juliet Ibekaku broke the news at the Conversation on
Anti-corruption Campaign organised by the Centre for Democratic Development
(CDD) in Abuja. She said not having an agreement or Memoranda of Understanding
with foreign countries for the return of looted money before now delayed the
process of discussion and recovery of looted funds.
“So far, we have
recovered part of the Malabu fund held by the UK courts. “We are also working
to finalise the process for the return of $321million and by December, we are
going to sign the MoU for the return of the money held in Switzerland. “I am
happy to also note here that some Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) working in
the area of asset recovery were involved in the negotiation of the MoU and will
be involved in monitoring the assets. “This is to ensure that the returned
funds are managed in a transparent manner as other recovery plans continue in
countries like UK, Island of Jersey and France,’’ she said.
Mrs Ibekaku added
that the Federal Government had also opened up discussions with the U.S.
government for the return of the money that left that country for two or three
years from 2013. The presidential aide
said an example of such money was Diepreye Alamieyeseigha’s money, adding that
various fronts were being opened up for the recovery of the money. She said the
money recovery mission was hinged on the Open Government Partnership Initiative
which was committed to four thematic areas: Transparency, Anti-corruption,
Access to information, Citizen engagement and Empowerment. She said the
government had set up one asset recovery account which made it easy for anybody
that wanted to track recovered money to know where the money was going to.
According to her,
this has put to rest Nigerians’ worry over the whereabouts of recovered money. Mrs
Ibekaku said over the years, it was identified that there was a problem with
the management of recovered money both domestically and internationally because
there was no way to account for it. She said when this administration came to
power, the President set up a Presidential Assets Recovery Committee to monitor
recovered assets. Mrs. Ibekaku said the committee, in turn, set up the Assets
Tracing subcommittee, adding that work was ongoing to determine where these
moneys went as from 2012. She said that the administration also created a
central account in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) called the Asset Recovery
Account.
The presidential
aide said the President also directed all the law enforcement agencies to put
all recovered money in the central account.
Ibekaku said that the president also directed that asset recovery should
now be ploughed into the budget to fund part of it, starting from 2017 “so that
is what the money is being used for,” she stressed. She said all the money
being recovered by anti-corruption agencies would go into o funding part of the
budget. The Executive Director of CDD, Ms Idayat Hassan, said the event was
organised with support from the Open Society Initiative for West Africa and the
Department for International Development (DFID)
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