The Federal Government has set up a panel to investigate the activities at the nations’ anti-corruption agencies namely, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission ICPC.
Purpose of the panel formulation is to investigate high profile corruption cases allegedly compromised by the EFCC officials.
Known as the Presidential Committee on Verification of Assets, it will report directly to the office of the Attorney – General of the Federation and Minister of Justice.
The committee is assigned to carry out the following duties follows:
“To identify all parties that engaged in conspiratorial fraudulent activities at EFCC that led to financial loss to the FGN;
“To analyse petitions submitted to the EFCC against persons and organisations in billions of naira that were not investigated or investigated and compromised by the EFCC hence caused collateral economic loss to the FGN;
“To analyse all cases the EFCC took over from other agencies or investigated with other agencies, and report the actual and collateral loss to the FGN;
“To assess the EFCC’s standing procedure on seizures, forfeitures, management of seized properties, remittances etc;
“To verify all assets seized by the EFCC and/or forfeited by criminal suspects to the EFCC onshore and offshore;
“To verify all remittances by the EFCC to the FGN;
“To reconcile assets seized and/or forfeited vis-a-vis assets remitted to the FGN;
“To identify and audit all bank accounts opened by the EFCC and all bank accounts seized from criminal suspects onshore and offshore from inception to date, among others.”
There has been complaints on how officials of the EFCC diverted seized properties and cash to their personal use over the years.
An example is that of the immediate past chairman of the EFCC, Ibrahim Larmode, allegedly accused of not being able to account for one trillion naira seized funds.
There are questions being asked of what became of the assets and cash recovered from the late Bayelsa State Governor, Chief Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, one time Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Tafa Balogun, and others.
The Guardian
