*Insists there is no controversy on funds’ recovery
Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, on Tuesday said her attention had been drawn to media reports of a “strongly-worded letter to the President” objecting to the payment of $16.9 million fees to two lawyers for the recovery of Abacha loot.
Oluyinka Akintunde, her Special Adviser on Media, in a statement, dissociated Adeosun and the Federal Ministry of Finance from the “recent malicious and misleading media reports”
An online platform,The Cable, reported on Monday that the minister refused to approve the payment of $16.9 million fees to two lawyers for the recovery of Abacha loot worth $321 million.
It also claimed that Adeosun wrote a strongly-worded letter to President Muhammadu Buhari, raising objections to the payment and that the recovered sum had been repatriated to Nigeria by the Swiss government, following the execution of the memorandum of understanding, MoU, between the two countries for the judicious use of the recovered funds.
TheCable reported that Enrico Monfrini, a Swiss lawyer hired by the Federal Government since 1999 to work on recovering Abacha loot, had finished the Luxembourg leg of the job since 2014 when Mohammed Bello Adoke was Attorney-General of the Federation.
“Monfrini had also been paid his fees by the Federal Government. The recovered money was then domiciled with the attorney-general of Switzerland, pending the signing of an MoU with Nigeria to avoid the issues of accountability around previous recoveries. All that was left after the signing of the MoU was a government-to-government communication for the money to be repatriated to Nigeria.
“However, Abubakar Malami, Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, had engaged the services of another set of lawyers in 2016 for a fee of about N6 billion,” TheCable claimed.
But Akintunde said the claims were tissues of lies.
“The Minister wishes to dissociate herself and the Federal Ministry of Finance from recent malicious and misleading media reports on the Abacha refunds. The Minister had at no time written any letter to the President or any member of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) on the payment of lawyers for the Abacha recovery.
“She also refuted the flawed media reports of controversy surrounding the Abacha recovery, disclosing that the sum of US$322,515,931.83 was received into a Special Account in the Central Bank of Nigeria on December 18, 2017 from the Swiss Government.
“For the avoidance of doubt, there is no controversy concerning the recovery of the Abacha monies from the Swiss Government.”
