The Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) and Transparency International (TI) Nigeria, have urged the Federal Government to pass a legal framework around the management and utilisation of recovered assets in the country.
The Executive Director, CISLAC and Head TI Nigeria, Auwal Musa Rafsanjani made the call on Tuesday in Abuja.
According to him, the delay in passing the legislation which the Nigerian government committed to in 2016 greatly undermined asset recovery and management process in Nigeria.
Rafsanjani said that it cost Nigeria billions in lost opportunity as international partners refused to engage the country because domestic recoveries continued to be mismanaged.
“This was because the international partners were not convinced that recovered assets would not be re-looted.
“In order to ensure transparency, the government needed to establish a database that would contain details of recovered assets including details of persons from whom they were recovered and how the recovered assets were utilised.
“This database should be publicly accessible and should be containing all interim and final forfeitures of different types of movable and immovable assets seized by different agencies.
“We are yet to see some concrete results after many years of extensive international and domestic effort,” he said.
He added that independent civil society organisations, including victims’ groups or representatives, are enabled to participate in the asset recovery process especially in the process of monitoring and deciding how recovered assets are utilized.
He said the media in this process have a crucial role in investigating the gaps in the current system and explaining who profits from the status quo.
Nigeria losing $18bn annually to tax evasion, money laundering
Rafsanjani also said that international financial intelligence co-opted from the Ministry of Finance, showed that over $18bn was lost abroad yearly to tax evasion, money laundering and other illicit financial flows out of Nigeria.
“Unfortunately, the amount put the country at the forefront in Africa as the worst illicit financial flow offenders.
“Elaborated international fraud schemes involving almost always reputable law and other middlemen were used to rob Nigerian citizens of billions of dollars that should be used to counter abject poverty, insecurity and abysmal service delivery,” Rafsanjani said.
He said that a case in point was the ongoing corruption in investor state arbitration between Process and Industrial Development (P&ID) versus Federal Republic of Nigeria.
He said that that Nigeria was currently battling the arbitration proceeding conducted within the United Kingdom jurisdiction.
He said that if lost, Nigeria tax payers would lose $6.6bn plus seven percent per annum against it for damages in favour of P&ID.
He said, “Cases like the P&ID arbitration deprived Nigeria out of precious resources while the corrupt Nigerian elite and international money laundered enjoy the proceeds.
“Foreign assets recovered by government did not compare to the amount of domestically seized and confiscated assets which included seized buildings, vehicles and others.”
He said that the Nigerian public needed to be convinced that those recoveries were not just another loot used for political survival and self-enrichment.
