The EFCC promises a 5% reward to whistleblowers of loot obtained from corrupt Nigerians hidden abroad

Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Executive Chairman Ola Olukoyede has stated that whistleblowers who provide information about assets stashed abroad in any part of the world by corrupt Nigerians will be rewarded with between 2.5 and 5% of the loot.

He therefore called on whistleblowers around the world to provide the Commission with useful and actionable intelligence on the monetary and non-monetary assets held abroad by corrupt Nigerians.

He conveyed this on Wednesday when delivering a lecture at the Cambridge International Symposium on Economic Crime in the UK.

According to him, any whistleblower who is privy to the storage of Nigerian assets abroad can help the country recover them. This initiative, he said, would provide great benefits.

“I welcome you all to the world of whistleblowing. If any of you know where Nigerian assets were stolen or taken anywhere in the world, we have an incentive for you; between 2.5% and 5%, then the assets will be returned to you upon recovery. This is the incentive we provide to encourage people to provide information about stolen assets.

You never tell if you give any information here, some of you might leave this place, multi-millionaires for the rest of your life,” he said.

The EFCC chairman stated that in less than three years as head of Nigeria’s anti-corruption body, the Commission had raised more than half a billion dollars for the Nigerian government.

“In the three years since I took office, we have handed over more than half a billion dollars in cash and assets to the government,” he said.

The recovery of these assets, he said, could be attributed to the ingenuity and professionalism of the EFCC investigators, a strong judiciary and access to credible intelligence. He linked Nigeria’s non-punishment-based asset forfeiture approach to what could be done in Australia and Canada. This framework, he explained, allows the Commission to request the confiscation of assets suspected to be the proceeds of crime without waiting for a criminal verdict.

“We have something similar to what is available in Australia and Canada that authorizes us to apply confiscation to suspected proceeds of crime,” he said. Through this approach, the anti-corruption king told his audience that an airplane, a university, plantations and houses suspected of being the proceeds of crime had been donated to the government.

He specifically mentioned the 752 housing units recovered from former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor Godwin Emefiele and the investigation of former Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, SAN, which resulted in the confiscation of 48 out of 57 houses allegedly resulting from corrupt practices.

“Last year, I opened an investigation into allegations of criminal abuse of office committed by the former Attorney General of Nigeria. We discovered that within eight years of him taking office, we managed to track down around 57 properties similar to his. We managed to lose around 48 properties,” he said.

The 43rd International Symposium on Economic Crime held in Cambridge is an annual event that brings together anti-corruption experts from around the world. Olukoyede’s presentation was made on the third day of the week-long event.