Buhari trace looted Fund to UK,France ,Switzerland and 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.

Mr Adesina who confirmed the move to Punch 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.”

 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.

Also  the 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.

 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.

The 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.