Switzerland to return N75.2bn Abacha loot to Nigeria

Swiss officials have said the $380m
siphoned off by the family of the
late Head of State, Gen. Sani Abacha,
and confiscated by the Geneva
authorities, will be returned to
Nigeria. The amount is about
N75.2bn at N198/dollar interbank
rate.
The file on the matter, opened
since 1999, would be closed, the
officials said in a statement on the
website of the Geneva public
prosecutor’s office.
According to the office, the move
comes now that Nigeria and the
Abacha family have struck a deal.
The Federal Government has long
been chasing funds looted by the
Abacha clan while the matriach was
in power from 1994 to 1998.
The prosecutor’s office said overall,
the Abacha clan was thought to
have diverted about $5bn from the
Nigerian treasury, adding that
much of it ended up abroad.
“The $380m in question was seized
in Luxembourg in 2006 on the
orders of the Geneva justice
authorities. The funds were under
the control of various companies
controlled by the Abacha family,
which is considered a criminal
organisation,” the prosecutor’s
office said in the statement.
It said the repatriation and
confiscation of the funds followed
the conclusion of an agreement in
July 2014 between the Federal
Government and the Abacha family.
This, it added, set out the
confiscation of the assets and their
return to Nigeria. The Federal
Government would drop its
complaint against Abba Abacha, the
son of the former ruler.
According to the prosecutor’s office
statement, the confiscation order
“allows, among other things, that
the funds returned to the Federal
Republic of Nigeria are monitored
by the World Bank,” and if the
monitoring is not effective, the
funds will be returned to the
Geneva authorities.
The statement also said that the
file against Abba Abacha was now
closed, based on an article in the
penal code, which allowed criminal
proceedings to be abandoned once
the defendant had made amends as
much as was possible.
In 2012, after a legal back and forth,
the Geneva Police Court gave Abba
Abacha a one-year suspended
prison sentence for belonging to a
criminal organisation.
Abba was absent from the court
room. The Federal Court in
Lausanne, Switzerland’s highest
instance, quashed the sentence in
May 2014.

Na wa oo, see money!

Na dis one u c, u no how much d present govt don take to another country ?
Der's God o