The National Crime Agency (NCA) in the UK says it has recovered $23,439,724.98 loot believed to have been siphoned out of Nigeria in the 1990s by the associates and family of former Head of State, General Sani Abacha.
According to a communique issued by the agency on Thursday, the funds formed part of a larger pool of monies identified by the United States Department of Justice (USDOJ) as having been misappropriated by Abacha and his allies.
The NCA revealed that the funds have now been transferred to the Home Office for onward transmission to the USDOJ.
It also pursued nearly seven years of protracted litigation and international negotiation to obtain the recovery order, to enforce the U.S. forfeiture order relating to the recovered monies.
Asset Denial Senior Manager at the NCA, Billy Beattie, assured of the agency’s fight against money laundering activities within the UK.
“The NCA is committed to ensuring that the UK is not a safe haven for criminals to launder their proceeds of crime, and the civil recovery of assets is a powerful weapon in this fight,” Beatie stated.
“We work closely with the UK and international partners to tackle the threat posed by corruption, which disproportionately impacts the poorest and most vulnerable members of society.
“We are committed to ensuring that those who perpetrate corruption do not benefit from their actions.”
The NCA case is ongoing with further monies having been identified by the USDOJ as having also been misappropriated by Abacha and his associates.
Since Abacha’s death in 1998, recovered monies have principally been stashed away in four major countries: Switzerland, Jersey Island in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Liechtenstein, reports said.
During the General Abdulsalami Abubakar era in 1999, $750million was recovered while $1.2 billion was recovered in 2002; $149 million repatriated from Jersey Island, UK in 2003; $500 million recovered in 2004 from Switzerland, and another $458 million recovered in 2005 from Switzerland, all under former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration.
Former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration also saw the recovery of $1 billion in 2012 and $380 million in 2015 respectively, both tranches from Switzerland.
Similarly, Liechtenstein and the United States repatriated the sum of $227 million and $48 million respectively in 2014 during Jonathan’s administration.
August 2020 saw the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the government of Ireland and the Nigerian government for the return of €5.5 million stolen by Abacha.
Abacha was a notorious kleptocrat who was named by Transparency International alongside Indonesia’s Suharto and Mobutu Seko of Zaire (now DR Congo) as the world’s worst state official thieves.
The late dictator is thought to have stolen between three and five billion dollars, the majority of which came from Nigeria’s oil resources.
The NCA stated that the latest case of Abacha’s loot recovery is still underway, with the USDOJ identifying further funds looted by Mr Abacha and his cronies.
It is unclear if and how the latest recovery will be transferred to the federal government of Nigeria. The government has yet to react to it.
(Adapted from several online sources including: Channels, Reuters and Premium Times).
