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.”