The suspended acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Mr Ibrahim Magu, could not give a proper account of missing 332 out of the 836 recovered properties in March 2018, the News Agency of Nigeria has reported.
NAN reported on Sunday that the latest allegation against the suspended EFCC boss was contained in a report of the Presidential Committee on Audit of Recovered Assets.
It also stated that the panel alleged that recovered properties were taken over by some top EFCC officials or sold to Magu’s friends and cronies at giveaway prices.
The news agency had, on Saturday reported that the panel, in its report titled, ‘Final Report of the Presidential Investigation Committee on the EFCC Federal Government Recovered Assets and Finances from May 2015 to May 2020,’ alleged that Magu was unable to account for the interest generated from N550bn cash recovered from 2015 to 2020.
The President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), set up the Justice Ayo Salami-led committee, which is currently investigating allegations of corruption against Magu after the panel on the audit of recovered assets submitted its report.
Besides the Chairman, Alhaji Abdullahi Ibrahim, other members of the previous committee were Deputy Inspector General Anthony Ogbizi; a member from the Federal Ministry of Justice; Mualledi Dogondaji from the EFCC; Hassan Abdullahi from the Department of State Services; an unnamed member from the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation; Chinedu Ifediora from the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit, while Mr Kazeem Attitebi served as the secretary.
The Salami panel was constituted to enable the suspended EFCC chairman to respond to allegations leveled against him in the report of the committee on an audit of recovered assets.
Magu’s friends, cronies bought properties at giveaway prices
The report stated, “Most of the recovered assets are allegedly sold without anyone knowing and without proper records and without recourse to the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing that has the mandate to undertake an evaluation of such properties.
“Some of the assets have been taken over by the EFCC officials while some are sold at giveaway prices to friends and cronies of the acting chairman.
“It is also on record that the (suspended) acting chairman is maintaining different accounts, including using proxies who return the benefits of the sold assets to him.
“These funds are then used to procure property and lands in the names of some of his proxies,’’
Falana denies receiving N28m from Magu, threatens libel suit
In a related development, a human rights lawyer, Mr Femi Falana (SAN), on Sunday denied receiving N28m from the suspended acting chairman of the EFCC.
Falana, in a pre-action letter signed by his lawyer, Adeyinka Olumide-Fusika (SAN) of Citipoint law firm, demanded a retraction of the claim by a newspaper that published a story suggesting that Magu had paid the sum of N28m to him from the money allegedly siphoned from the EFCC.
The letter with the title, “Pre-action demand regarding your defamatory imputations against Mr. Femi Falana, SAN, in your online publication, titled, ‘More trouble for Magu as new facts on re-looting of recovered funds emerge’,” threatened to institute legal action against the newspaper should it fail to apologize to him and publish a retraction of the story on its front page within 48 hours.
Olumide-Fusika stated in the letter that he received Falana’s “immediate instruction” to demand that “you (the newspaper’s editor) acknowledge your wrongdoing, expressly admit that what you imputed against my client was false, and apologize for your unprofessionalism and the damage you have caused to him”
“I do hope that you will, within the next 48 hours, comply with this gentlemanly request by publication on the front page of your newspaper. Failing compliance, my instruction is to issue a Writ in the tort of defamation in order to afford you an opportunity to prove what you imputed against his my client’s character,” the letter added.
The newspaper’s story was based on a report published by NAN, which claimed to have obtained the final report of a prior presidential panel allegedly indicting Magu for being unable to account for the interest generated from N550bn cash recovered from 2015 to 2020.
Olumide-Fusika stated in his pre-action letter that the newspaper, by its publication “meant and intended to mean and convey” to its readership that Magu allegedly used a bureau de change operator to pass the sum of N28m to Falana in an alleged money laundering scheme.
Falana’s lawyer described the publication as “damning against my client because his entire career as a lawyer has been devoted to fighting human rights abuses and corruption in high and low places”.
