EFCC recovers N134.3bn, $121m in 10 months — Bawa

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) claims that between January and October 2022, it recovered N134.3 billion and 121 million USD among other profits of crime.

This information was revealed by the EFCC Chairman, Mr. Abdulrasheed Bawa, on Thursday in Abuja while participating in the 62nd State House briefing session hosted by the Presidential Communication Team.

According to Bawa, President Muhammadu Buhari ordered that the seized monies be used for important national initiatives.

Moving on to statistics of what we have accomplished, especially since January, he said.

“From January 1 to October 31 of the current year, we have recovered N134.3 billion in cash. We have also recovered 121 million dollars, pounds, euros, and Japanese yen, among other currencies.

“Among the recoveries we’ve obtained for non-cash goods are 52 cars, gadgets, motorcycles, clothes, and real estate.

These are data that are more or less direct recovery from January to October 2022; they do not represent cases that are under review or investigation.

According to Bawa, the commission made considerable progress in indirect recovery in November.

He said that the EFCC has recovered funds for the Niger Delta Development Commission and the Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) (NDDC).

“Through our investigation, we were able to recover for the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) 354 million dollars in unpaid royalties from one of the oil corporations in November 2022.

“We are going to transfer them roughly N30 billion for the recovery we are making for the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), for instance, between now and possibly next week” (about 30 million dollars).

“These are recoveries we’ve made for declining to give NDDC the mandatory payment of three percent.

And through fraudulent contractual engagements that the NDDC carried out over the years, we were able to collect billions of Naira.

You may recall that the EFCC was given the authority to conduct a criminal investigation in relation to the forensic audit.

According to the EFCC director, the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) requires all relevant authorities to open accounts in both local and international currency.

According to him, the Act additionally stipulated that all funds that were ultimately lost and belonging to the Federal Government should be deposited into that account.

According to Bawa, such payments were previously sent into a specific federal government account before POCA.

And we must conduct an audit of the money in our EFCC recovery account, which we deposited N120 billion, N29 million, almost 6.6 million Euros, and roughly I.1 million pounds.

The Lagos-Ibadan expressway, the second Niger Bridge, and the Abuja-Kano expressway will all be finished with the help of the cash, he explained.