Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, PACAC, Professor Itse Sagay, has disclosed that whopping N1.35trillion public funds were stolen by 55 top government officials, businessmen during administrations of former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo, late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan.
Sagay disclosed this at a conference on Promoting International Co-operation in Combating Illicit Financial Flows and Enhancing Asset Recovery to Foster Sustainable Development, in Abuja, citing a study which limited the looting to only six years (2006- 2013).
The revelation came on a day the Debt Management Office, DMO, put the nation’s total debt at N19.2 trillion as at the first quarter of this year. Sagay said the funds looted during the period under review to 2015 was much more when fuel subsidy scams, billion-dollar arms purchase scams, hundreds of millions of dollars taken from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, by a former minister to bribe election officials in 2015, were taken into consideration.
Meanwhile, the chairman, International Anti-Corruption Conference Council, former Vice-Chair, Transparency International, TI, and member, African Union High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Transfers, Akere Muna, has called for the implementation of the recommendations of the Thabo Mbeki Panel which called for the creation of escrow accounts within the Development Banks for transfer of illicit funds until all legal issues around them were cleared
“Frozen money should not stay with the complicit bank, but in an escrow account with a third party, pending the courts’ or competent authorities’ determination as to the rightful owners of the funds”, Muna said.
