The Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) has seized property of over N47 billion from former Minister of Petroleum, Diezani Allison-Madueke.
The commission said the property seized from the former minister were jewelry and houses, that the estimated value of the jewelry is N14.4 billion, while the estimated value of the houses seized and forfeited 80 million dollars.
The EFCC Chairman, Abdulrasheed Bawa, revealed this to the House of Representatives ad hoc committee investigating the assessment and status of recovered loot on Friday in Abuja.
The anti-graft chairman said that Diezani’s jewelry’s are still in the custody of the agency, adding that it had not been auction but had been finally forfeited to the Federal Government.
Bawa said that court processes, procedures, and administrative exigencies had stalled some of the seized assets to be auctioned by the anti-graft agency.
Bawa however said that the agency would henceforth deal with the seized assets case by case at the courts in order to quickly disposed of the assets.
“Already the Federal Government has set up a committee under the chairmanship of the Solicitor-General for the Federation and I think they are working tirelessly.
This according to him is to ensure that assets that are not only recovered by the EFCC but the entirety of the recovery agencies assets are disposed off.
“We have EFCC representatives from that committee and we believe at the end of the day Nigerians are going to appreciate what that committee will come out with in terms of the mandate given to them,” he said.
The EFCC chairman said that in its quest to transform the agency, it would soon digitalize its processes, adding that it had also created and upgraded four additional departments to restore confidence.
Bawa listed the departments to include: Intelligence, procurement, Internal Affairs, and the Information Communication Technology Department.
He added that there was no loot that had been re-looted as been speculated, stressing that going forward, the EFCC would be different and Nigerians would be the better for it.
He said that he would always honour the National Assembly to account for what the agency had done, adding that public servants come and go but the institution would remain.
