Buhari traces looted funds to UK, Switzerland, others

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.”