By David O,
Attorney-General of the nFederation and Minister of Justice Mr Abubakar Malami SAN on Tuesday blamed the National Assembly for slow pace of recovery of looted funds from corrupt public office holders in the country saying that the delay in passage of the Proceeds of Crimes Bill in both Senate and House of Representatives is the major clog on the wheels of progress in recovery efforts.
Malami spoke at the second day of the House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee investigative hearing on Recovery of Looted Funds, Movable and Immovable Assets for Effective Utilization and Management from 2002-2021 at the Hall 0.28 New Building National Assembly.
He further said that when when he assumed office in 2015 as Attorney-General of the Federation, there was no blueprint of government on recovery of stolen funds and assets from corrupt public office holders past and present.
He informed the lawmakers that he initiated the needed legal framework for asset recovery-the Asset Recovery and Management Bill an executive bill still pending before the two chambers of the apex legislature.
The Chief law officer of the federal government however regretted that the slow pace of the Proceed of Crimes Bill which is still undergoing legislative scrutiny at the legislative institution had affected the passage of the new legal instrument for funds and asset recovery.
On the recovery efforts put up by the Ministry of Justice, he said that they established an asset recovery unit to fasttrack the process adding that different recovery accounts were opened at the Central Bank of Nigeria for it.
He also said that is the responsibility of of the agency of government involved in funds or asset recovery to take inventory and status of such funds and or assets.
He however revealed that in December 2017, a total of $300 M was recovered from Abacha’s loot. In May 2020, $311M was recovered from the Ireland of New Jersey USA. Another 5 M Euros was again said to ‘ve been recovered from the Abacha loot and lately N4, 217M Pounds was received from the Ibori loot from United Kingdom.
The AGF had hinted that all these funds had been deposited at the Central Bank of Nigeria CBN recovery accounts and added that there are different such accounts namely :Asset Recovery, Interim Forfeiture and Final Forfeiture for EFCC and ICPC.
Fielding questions from Chairman of the House Committee Hon. Ade Adeogun on how much is the total value of what has been recovered so far, he said that there has not been a coordinated way of getting the records of all the recoveries done so far.
On what the recovered funds had been used for as queried by some other lawmakers in the probe panel, he said it had formed part of the budget of the government used to finance the Lagos-Ibadan, Abuja-Kaduna expressway road projects as well as the 2nd Niger Bridge.
Nontheless the committee revealed that it uncovered from the documents submitted to it that the Office of Attorney General of the Federation had withdrawn a whooping N2bn from the CBN recovery account for the prosecution of war against terrorism and queried the finding
Moreover the probe panel also queried the Accountant-General of the Federation Mr Ahmed Idris over withdrawals of N33M, N32M and N20M from the recovery account of the agency at the Central Bank of Nigeria.
The Accountant-General however explained to the committee that in 2021 budget of the agency, N33 be was provided for the recovery efforts of the office and it is making payments based on this provision.
In a closing remark, chairman of the committee Hon. Adeogun who aligned with other members of the committee who were not satisfied with this explanation demanded another closed-door session with the Accountant-General on to fine-tune the withdrawals on Friday.
