A Federal High court in Lagos has ordered the final forfeiture of
\n$153,310,000, (about 34 billion Naira), allegedly linked to the former
\nMinister of Petroleum, Diezani Alison-Madueke.<\/p>\n
The monies in question were purportedly siphoned from the Nigerian
\nNational Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).<\/p>\n
Justice Muslim Hassan, in a judgment delivered on Thursday, said the
\nEconomic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had successfully proved
\nthat the monies were proceeds from an illegal activity.<\/p>\n
He said he was satisfied that all the conditions stated in Section 17 of
\nthe Advanced Fee Fraud and Other Related Offence Act were duly fulfilled
\nby the anti-graft agency.<\/p>\n
Justice Hassan accordingly ordered the final forfeiture of all the money
\nto the Federal Government of Nigeria.<\/p>\n
Temporary Forfeiture<\/p>\n
The court had on January 6, 2017, temporarily ordered the\u00a0 forfeiture of
\n$153,310,000 which the former minister allegedly stashed in three banks in
\nthe country.<\/p>\n
Out of the purported stolen funds, a sum of 23,446,300,000 Naira was said
\nto have been kept in Sterling Bank Plc, 9,080,000,000 Naira in First Bank
\nPlc and five million dollars in Access Bank Plc.<\/p>\n
After ordering the temporary forfeiture of the monies to the Federal
\nGovernment, Justice Muslim Hassan gave Sterling Bank and any other
\ninterested party 14 days to appear before him to prove the legitimacy of
\nthe monies, failing which the funds would be permanently forfeited to the
\nFederal Government.<\/p>\n
The judge made the order in favour of the EFCC which appeared before him
\nwith an ex-parte application seeking the temporary forfeiture of the
\nfunds.<\/p>\n
In a nine-paragraph affidavit filed in support of the ex-parte
\napplication, an EFCC investigator, Moses Awolusi, claimed that the
\nanti-graft agency discovered through its investigations, how the former
\nminister sometime in December 2014 invited a former Managing Director of
\nFidelity Bank Plc, Nnamdi Okonkwo, to her office where they allegedly
\nhatched the plan of how a cash sum of $153,310,000 would be moved from
\nNNPC to Okonkwo to be saved for Diezani.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27446,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n