Chat 212 - News Summary...
- FG has intensified efforts to recover about 185 million euro stashed in Liechtenstein banks by late military dictator, General Sani Abacha.
- There have been several steps taken to recover it, we had a lawyer who has been working on this case, like several other cases, of lost Abacha money.
Chat 212 - Newsmail Report...
The Federal Government has intensified efforts to recover about 185 million euro stashed in Liechtenstein banks by late military dictator, General Sani Abacha.
The government has been trying to recover the fund in the last 14 years but the beneficiaries have been using legal tactics to frustrate that effort, according to the Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
Briefing journalists yesterday on the sidelines of the just concluded World Bank/IMF Annual Meetings in Washington DC, United States, the minister said the money was discovered during the tenure of President Olusegun Obasanjo and government had taken several steps to ensure it was returned.
She said: “We have been pursuing this money in Liechtenstein. This is part of the legacy of the Abacha money that was taken out of the country.
“There have been several steps taken to recover it. We had a lawyer who has been working on this case, like several other cases, of lost Abacha money. The essence is that we identified this money in Liechtenstein, totalling 185 million euro through our lawyer in Switzerland.
“We first started the search under the Obasanjo administration, which was continued under the President Goodluck Jonathan administration. We have been pursuing it in the past few years with the same lawyer. The Attorney-General of the Federation has been working on this.
“There are several legal steps and challenges that have been thrown in the way of returning this money in the Liechtenstein courts. The money was transferred through some Shell companies, which were opened up in Liechtenstein and the money was transferred into Liechtenstein banks, but the beneficiary was Abacha.”
Okonjo-Iweala, however, said that the beneficiaries had thrown all sorts of legal obstacles to block the recovery, even after the courts in Liechtenstein had ruled that Nigeria should get the money back.
The minister said the beneficiaries’ lawyer had taken the case to the European Court for Human Rights, saying that the Liechtenstein government has violated their human rights by allowing this money to be taken away.
The minster, who dismissed the claim as frivolous, however, pointed out that the matter will be delayed for another two or three years, while the Liechtenstein government will continue to benefit by investing the money.
She said that the Federal Government had even agreed to indemnify the banks in case it was fined as a result of the case, but they have now reneged on the agreement.
“We signed an indemnity, I signed it, with approval from Mr. President, and after receiving it, they now turned and said no, insisting that they need a thirdparty guarantee, a bank in another country, a third party country to guarantee them, but this is not acceptable, what would you need a third party guarantee for?
“The money belongs to our country and we will fight to get our money back, that is what we are doing, we are doing it from several ways, we have said to them that if they have a problem on how the money will be used, we said we will apply it the same way when the Swiss government returned $500 million equivalent to us. We had the World Bank work with us with both Nigeria and Swiss non-governmental organisations (NGOs) monitoring its implementation,” she said.
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