‘We Have Incentives For You’ – EFCC Offers 5% Reward For Tips On Looted Nigerian Assets Abroad

The Executive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ola Olukoyede, has announced a 5% reward for whistleblowers worldwide to help the anti-graft agency with useful, actionable intelligence on monetary and non-monetary assets that corrupt Nigerians have stashed abroad.

Naija News reports that Olukoyede made this known on Wednesday, while delivering a lecture at the Cambridge 43rd International Symposium on Economic Crime in the United Kingdom.

Olukoyede said any whistleblower who knows where Nigerian assets are kept abroad could come forward to help the country recover them and would receive juicy rewards.

According to the EFCC boss, in less than three years of assuming office as head of Nigeria’s foremost anti-graft agency, the Commission has recovered more than half a billion dollars for the Nigerian government.

He said, “I welcome all of you to the world of whistleblowing. If any one of you is privy to where Nigerian assets are stolen or taken to anywhere in the world, we have an incentive for you; between 2.5% and 5%, it’s going to go back to you upon recovery. That is an incentive we have put in place to encourage people to come forward to give information about stolen assets. You never tell if you give any information here, some of you may leave this place, multi-millionaire in your lifetime.

“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.”

Olukoyede linked Nigeria’s non-conviction-based asset forfeiture approach to what is available in Australia and Canada, stressing that the framework allowed the Commission to seek forfeiture of assets suspected to be proceeds of crime without waiting for a criminal conviction.

He stated, “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 also mentioned that 752 housing units recovered from a former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele and the investigations of a former Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), which yielded the forfeiture of 48 out of the 57 houses suspected to be proceeds of corrupt practices.

He added, “Sometimes last year, I opened investigations upon reasonable suspicion of criminal abuse of office by the immediate past attorney-general of Nigeria. We discovered that within eight years of his being in office, we were able to trace about 57 such properties to him. We’ve been able to forfeit about 48.”