Looted Funds: N594bn recovered in three years through whistleblowing-PACAC

Looted Funds: N594bn recovered in three years through whistleblowing-PACAC

The Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee against Corruption (PACAC), Prof. Itsey Sagay, has disclosed of plans to involve the Federal Bureau for Investigation (FBI) to help Nigeria track and expose relatives of former governors under whom most of the looted funds were channelled through.

Sagay disclosed this on Wednesday at the Two-Day Roundtable with the theme: ‘Entrenching Whistleblowing In Regulatory And Revenue Generating Agency’, organised by PACAC in collaboration with African Centre for Media and Information Literacy (AFRICMIL) with the support of MacArthur Foundation.

He said that Nigerians living abroad, particularly in the USA, have suggested that the Whistle-blower’s Policy should be operated abroad in order to expose public office holders who looted funds, and then launder them by buying expensive properties in the name of their relations living or studying abroad.

According to him, some former Governors, most of who are now Senators, transferred public funds abroad and used them to purchase expensive and luxurious properties in the names of their relations residing in the foreign country concerned.

He said: “The idea is that our Government should on appropriate tip off contact the FBI in the USA to investigate such relations regarding their source of funds for the properties in their names. Since making a false statement to the FBI is a felony with the definite consequence of imprisonment, these siblings or relations of the real Nigerian owners will confess to being mere fronts and recovery of such assets can proceed from there.

“I believe this is a worthwhile process deserving consideration by our Anti-corruption Agencies and the Federal Ministry of Justice, particularly under the Mutual Legal Assistance Agreement we already have with many developed countries.”

Sagay, however reminded that the Whistleblowing Policy has been successful with the 791 reported cases and recovering of N594.09 billion in three years.

According to him, “the policy has been successful, not only in terms of assets actually recovered through information provided by whistleblowers but also by revelation of the infinite variety of scams used by fraudulent Nigerians in swindling the government and people of Nigeria.

“Additionally, as at November 2019, less than three years after the introduction of the Policy, the Federal Government had recovered N594.09 billion from the implementation of the policy.”

Speaking, the Coordinator of AFRICMIL, Mr. Chido Onuma, warned that the bane of Nigeria’s development is corruption, which was brought to the fore by the 2016 case study by the PricewaterhouseCoopers that the impact on the country’s economy projects a 37 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) could be lost by 2030 if left unchecked.

Onuma said that this informed the launching of the Corruption Anonymous (CORA) by AFRICMIL in 2017 and their enlistment of PACAC to organise the workshop to highlight the necessity of whistleblowing as a way of checking rampant corruption in the regulatory and revenue-generating institutions.

“Despite its challenges, mainly bordering on lack of proper legal and institutional framework, the whistleblowing pol6has achieved considerable success, manifested in the recovery of huge amounts of looted public funds in local and foreign currencies, as well as other mouth-watering state assets,” he said.

He however, noted that even though the whistleblowing mechanism exists in some government agencies, many others do not have such framework in place, and even for those that do, lack of coordination means limited efficacy and impact of the provisions.

To this end, Onuma identified the need for all relevant revenue generating and regulatory agencies to have in place an operational whistleblowing policy.

Also speaking, the Minister for State on Budget and National Planning, Prince Clem Agba, said his Ministry recognize the value of whistleblowing in not only curbing waste and corruption but also dealing with various issues of maladministration existing across board in the public and private sectors which also either directly or indirectly impact negatively on government’s revenue-generation ability and expenditure profile, especially given the challenging situation the country faces with being able to adequately fund the annual appropriation through publicly-generated revenue and thus reducing its reliance on borrowed funds.

Agba also noted that Whistleblowing is a key component of Nigeria’s extant commitment within its Open Goverrunent Partnership (OGP) obligations.

He however, assured commitment tin his my capacity as the Co-Chair of Nigeria’s OGP Implementation Steering Committee, “to ensuring the effective implementation of all progressive ideas that would enhance its effective implementation in Nigeria for the good of the Nigerian nation and its citizens at large”.

By PRNigeria