FG to deploy PI in recovery of looted funds

Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to President Muhammadu Buhari, Mr. Femi Adesina says the federal government is planning to engage the services of foreign private investigators to help trace and find looted funds belonging to Nigeria.

According to him, the Federal Government specifically targets the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Switzerland and other European jurisdictions where it believes corrupt officials have been stashing public funds.

This is coming on the heels of the declaration by President Buhari recently that he inherited an almost empty treasury from his predecessor, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, thus vowing that his administration would recover all the looted funds stashed in foreign banks by corrupt Nigerians.

Adesina told Punch, that “Everything that needs to be done to get all those funds repatriated will be done, including engaging private investigators”.

Buhari had lamented that officials of the recent past government jettisoned all financial and administrative instructions put in place in parastatals and agencies while embracing impunity, lack of accountability and financial recklessness in the management of national resources.

This, the President decried, had thrown the country into financial crisis.

Adesina said the identification of foreign banks being used to stash stolen funds was one of the mandates given to Buhari during a meeting he had with President Barak Obama at the recent G-7 summit in Germany.

He said, “When the President met with the G7, the promise that the American President gave him was that Nigeria should just provide all the facts, the figures, the statistics, including the banks.

“He promised that if Nigeria could make the information available, then the US will help in recovering the stolen funds.”

When asked specifically if the Federal Government had started identifying the banks, the presidential spokesman said, “Yes. In fact, the President said the government will spend the next three months identifying banks, individuals and monies that have been ferried out of this country.

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