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UN plans to recover looted funds for Nigeria
Chijama Ogbu, with agency report
Nigeria’s quest to have her looted funds returned has received a boost as the United Nations has announced a plan to help Nigeria recover the looted funds.
The anti-crime office of the global agency, The UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said it would help Nigeria and Kenya recover whatever amounts were exported out of the nearly $11 billion looted from both countries.
In the 1990s, corrupt local officials stole $7.7 billion from oil-rich Nigeria, out of which at least $2.2 billion was exported, and more than $3 billion from Kenya, according to the UNODC in a report by EuropaWorld.
The quest for the return of Nigeria’s loot funds, a significant proportion of which is believed to have been embezzled by the late maximum leader Gen. Sani Abacha and his cronies, started during the regime of General Abdulsalam Abubakar and intensified under President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Although some returns had been made, it is not very clear the exact amount so far recovered from the family.
It is estimated that Abacha, who died of a heart attack in 1998, siphoned off the $3 billion funds, which he invested in several countries abroad including Britain and Switzerland.
UNODC estimated that corruption and the transfer of illicit funds had been a major factor in the flight of capital from Africa, with more than $400 billion stolen and hidden in foreign countries. It said that around $100 billion of the total came from Nigeria alone.
“The recovery of stolen assets is one of the most promising and concrete aspects of the fight against corruption,” UNODC chief, Antonio Maria Costa, told journalists at the UN complex in Vienna, Austria, on what is also the first International Anti-Corruption Day, marking the Convention’s signing conference in Mérida, Mexico.
So far, 114 countries have signed the Convention and 13 have ratified it. It will enter into force when 30 countries have amended their laws according to its requirements. UNODC offers technical assistance for upgrading national legal systems.
“ Even before the Convention enters into force, it allows us to help countries to retrieve monies plundered from their national treasuries. These nations urgently need funds for development,” Costa, flanked by Kenyan Ambassador, Julius Kiplagat Kandie, and Nigerian Ambassador Biodun Owoseni, said.
According to the report, the Convention binds UN Member States to criminalise corrupt practices, including money laundering, help one another determine money trails, seize and freeze illicit funds, deny safe haven to corrupt officials, and, as a “fundamental principle,” return stolen funds to their rightful owners.
UNODC said it would assess the two countries’ legal and institutional frameworks and recommend measures to facilitate the return of any recovered assets.
The PUNCH, Thursday, December 16, 2005
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