EFCC Offers Whistleblowers Up To 5% For Recovering Stolen Nigerian Assets Anywhere In The World | Sahara Reporters

He made the disclosure while outlining the EFCC’s recent asset recovery efforts, saying the commission had forfeited cash and assets worth more than $500 million to the Federal Government within the past three years.

The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ola Olukoyede, has said Nigerians who provide information leading to the recovery of stolen Nigerian assets hidden or taken abroad could receive between 2.5% and 5% of the recovered assets.

Olukoyede disclosed this on Wednesday while delivering a lecture at the Cambridge International Symposium on Economic Crime in the United Kingdom, where he called for stronger whistleblower protection and incentives to encourage Nigerians to help the government trace assets allegedly stolen from the country.

“The citizens must be encouraged with your whistleblower protection,” Olukoyede said.

“If any of you is privy to where Nigerian asset is stolen or taken to anywhere in the world, we have an incentive for you. Between 2.5 and 5 percent is going to go back to you upon recovery.”

The EFCC chairman said the incentive is intended to encourage members of the public with credible information about the location of allegedly stolen Nigerian assets to come forward and assist the commission in recovering them.

He made the disclosure while outlining the EFCC’s recent asset recovery efforts, saying the commission had forfeited cash and assets worth more than $500 million to the Federal Government within the past three years.

“Within three years of my assumption of office, we’ve been able to forfeit both cash and assets worth over half a billion dollars to the government,” he said.

Olukoyede said the commission’s ability to trace and recover assets was critical to tackling economic and financial crimes, particularly where proceeds of crime had been converted into properties or moved across borders.

He said Nigeria’s legal framework empowers the EFCC to seek forfeiture of assets suspected to be proceeds of crime without necessarily waiting for a criminal conviction.

“We have similar to what is obtainable in Australia and Canada that empowers us to apply the forfeiture to proceeds of what is suspected to be proceeds of crime,” he said.

According to him, the process begins with an ex parte application to the high court based on probable suspicion that an asset represents proceeds of crime.

“You apply ex parte to the high court upon a probable suspicion of the proceeds of crime,” he said.

Olukoyede cited the recent forfeiture of an aircraft allegedly linked to a member of a monitoring committee for a power project in Nigeria.

He said the individual was allegedly found to have collected a $30 million bribe, resulting in the forfeiture of the aircraft.

Olukoyede said the commission secured the forfeiture within two months of applying to the court.

He also disclosed that the EFCC had forfeited a property containing approximately 753 housing units from a former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

The EFCC chairman further disclosed that investigators had traced 57 properties allegedly linked to Abubakar Malami, the immediate past Attorney-General of the Federation, following an investigation into suspected abuse of office.