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Nigeria on track to recover Abacha illegally acquired loot – to invest funds in social projects
Nigeria will recover US$227 million of funds illegally acquired by former military dictator Sani Abacha, the country’s finance ministry said on Thursday, after a 16-year battle to retrieve the money from Liechtenstein.
For years, Nigeria’s efforts to get the money back had been stymied by a lawsuit from companies linked to Abacha’s family, alleging infringement of their rights to a fair trial.
Nigeria’s finance minister last year accused Liechtenstein of using legal challenges as a pretext to keep the money stolen by Abacha, who died in 1998.
According to Transparency International , Abacha acquired as much as US$5 billion of public money during his five years running Africa’s top oil producer from 1993 to 1998.
“We can confirm that Nigeria will on June 25, 2014, receive the sum of euro 167 million (US$227 million) from the government of the Principality of Liechtenstein, part of looted funds recovered from the Abacha family,” the ministry said in a statement.
Nigeria’s finance ministry had said it was seeking to repatriate 185 million euros (US$252 million) of stolen funds. It was not immediately clear if it would repatriate the rest later on.
Nigeria said it had dropped the case against the Abachas as part of a deal to recover the money and, in turn, the dictator’s family agreed to drop its human rights suit. The country will invest the money in projects picked by a committee of ministers and monitored by an independent third party. Some of it will go into a fund on behalf of future generations.
