Diezani Alison-Madueke to Forfeit $153m to FG

By Nuel Nonny | 7th January 2017

Efforts of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), on Friday clamped on former Petroleum minister, Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke, as it secured a temporary forfeiture order against Mrs Diezani with respect to the sum of $153m seized from her by the agency.

Justice Muslim Hasan of the Federal High Court in Lagos gave the order of temporary forfeiture after hearing an ex-parte application filed by EFCC counsel, Mr Rotimi Oyedepo.

PM News reports that the former Petroleum minister allegedly diverted the forfeited sum from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and stashed same in 3 Nigerian banks.

Out of the allegedly diverted $153.3m, a sum of N23,446,300,000 was kept in Sterling Bank PLC while N9,080,000,000 was hidden in First Bank Plc and $5m 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 of Nigeria.

In a nine-paragraph affidavit sworn to by the EFCC investigator, Moses Awolusi, and filed in support of the ex parte application, Awolusi averred that the anti-graft agency discovered through its investigations how sometime in December 2014 Diezani invited a former Managing Director of Fidelity Bank Plc, Nnamdi Okonkwo, to her office where they hatched the plan of how a cash sum of $153,310,000 would be moved from NNPC to Okonkwo to be saved for Diezani.

According to Awolusi, Diezani instructed Okonkwo to ensure that the money was “neither credited into any known account nor captured in any transaction platforms” of Fidelity Bank.

Awolusi informed the court that the EFCC had recovered the sum of N23.4bn in draft and had registered it as an exhibit marked, EFCC 01.

The investigator said the EFCC had also recovered another $5m out of the money kept with the Managing Director of Access Bank Plc, Mr Herbert Wigwe.

He said the $5m was recovered in draft and had been registered as an exhibit marked, EFCC 02.

According to him, First Bank’s ED, Lawal, had converted the $40m kept with him to N9,080,000,000.

Awolusi said the EFCC had recovered that also in draft and registered it as Exhibit EFCC 03.

EFCC counsel, Oyedepo said the application was brought in line with Section 17 of the Advance Fee Fraud and Other Related Offences Act No. 14, 2006 and Section 44(2) of the 1999 Constitution, and that granting the application was in the best interest of justice.