A Federal High court in Lagos has ordered the final forfeiture of
$153,310,000, (about 34 billion Naira), allegedly linked to the former
Minister of Petroleum, Diezani Alison-Madueke.
The monies in question were purportedly siphoned from the Nigerian
National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
Justice Muslim Hassan, in a judgment delivered on Thursday, said the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had successfully proved
that the monies were proceeds from an illegal activity.
He said he was satisfied that all the conditions stated in Section 17 of
the Advanced Fee Fraud and Other Related Offence Act were duly fulfilled
by the anti-graft agency.
Justice Hassan accordingly ordered the final forfeiture of all the money
to the Federal Government of Nigeria.
Temporary Forfeiture
The court had on January 6, 2017, temporarily ordered the forfeiture of
$153,310,000 which the former minister allegedly stashed in three banks in
the country.
Out of the purported stolen funds, a sum of 23,446,300,000 Naira was said
to have been kept in Sterling Bank Plc, 9,080,000,000 Naira in First Bank
Plc and five million dollars in Access Bank Plc.
After ordering the temporary forfeiture of the monies to the Federal
Government, Justice Muslim Hassan gave Sterling Bank and any other
interested party 14 days to appear before him to prove the legitimacy of
the monies, failing which the funds would be permanently forfeited to the
Federal Government.
The judge made the order in favour of the EFCC which appeared before him
with an ex-parte application seeking the temporary forfeiture of the
funds.
In a nine-paragraph affidavit filed in support of the ex-parte
application, an EFCC investigator, Moses Awolusi, claimed that the
anti-graft agency discovered through its investigations, how the former
minister sometime in December 2014 invited a former Managing Director of
Fidelity Bank Plc, Nnamdi Okonkwo, to her office where they allegedly
hatched the plan of how a cash sum of $153,310,000 would be moved from
NNPC to Okonkwo to be saved for Diezani.