The Presidency says the Federal Government is concluding plans, latest by December, with the Switzerland Government for the repatriation of $321m looted from Nigeria.
The Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Justice Reforms, Mrs. Juliet Ibekaku, made the disclosure at the Conversation on Anti-corruption Campaign organised by the Centre for Democratic Development in Abuja on Monday.
She said that before now, Nigeria had no agreement or Memoranda of Understanding with foreign countries for the return of looted money.
This development, she said, was the reason why it took Nigeria awhile to initiate the process of discussion and recovery of the looted funds at the international level.
“So far, we have recovered part of the Malabu fund held by the UK courts.
“We are also working to finalise the process for the return of $321m and by December, we are going to sign the MoU for the return of the money held in Switzerland.
“I am happy to also note here that some Civil Society Organisations working in the area of asset recovery were involved in the negotiation of the MOU and will be involved in monitoring the assets.
“This is to ensure that the returned funds are managed in a transparent manner as other recovery plans continue in countries such as UK, Island of Jersey and France,’’ she said.
Ibekaku said that the Federal Government had also opened up discussion with the US government for the return of the looted funds from 2013.
The Presidential aide said that an example of such money was the Diepreye Alamieyeseigha’s money, adding that different fronts were being opened up for the recovery of the money.
She said that the money recovery mission was hinged on the Open Government Partnership Initiative which was committed to four thematic areas: Transparency, Anti-corruption, Access to information, Citizen Engagement and Empowerment.
She said the government had set up one asset recovery account which made it easy for anybody that wanted to track recovered money to know where the money was going to.
According to her, this put to rest worry by Nigerians over the whereabouts of the recovered money.
Ibekaku said that over the years, it was identified that there was a problem with the management of recovered money, both domestically and internationally, because there was no way to account for it.
She said that when this administration came to power, the President set up a presidential assets recovery committee to monitor what was going on with recovered assets from the agencies.
