Ibori’s conviction cost British govt N4.4bn –Senate

Ibori’s conviction cost British govt N4.4bn –Senate

The Chairman, Senate Committee on Drugs, Narcotics, Financial
Crimes and anti-corruption, Senator Victor Lar, revealed on Friday that
a whopping sum of £14m (N4.4bn) was spent to secure the conviction
of former Governor James Ibori, in the United Kingdom on April 17,
2012.
Lar, who disclosed this while Federal Government agencies under the
supervision of his committee were defending their 2015 budgets in the
Senate, however, said the case was at no cost to Nigerian anti-graft
agencies.
The senator stressed the need to amend the enabling laws of the
Independent Corrupt Practices Commission and Other Related
Offences Commission, the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission, and the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, so that
they could be receiving their funds directly.
“All the convictions were secured with very limited or no funds. People
are quick to celebrate the conviction of James Ibori in the UK. The
truth is that to secure Ibori’s conviction, a whopping sum of £14m was
expended.
“That is almost N4.4bn which is more than 10 years recurrent and
capital budgets of all the anti-corruption agencies put together,” he
stated.
Lar said that other countries were able to prosecute financial crimes
successfully because a percentage of funds recovered from the
proceeds of crime was usually retained by the recovering agency for
funding its activities.
“Once you are arrested and taken to court, it is outside the control of
the enforcement agencies. So it is not entirely the fault of the
enforcement agencies that there is corruption in the country.
“This administration has fought corruption more than at any other time
because we have more petitions, more people are taken to court and
we have more convictions now than ever before,” Lar said.
In 2012, for instance, Lar said the EFCC secured about 87 convictions,
116 in 2013 and 136 in 2014.
Heads of the anti-corruption agencies, while making the presentations,
lamented the poor funding of the agencies and urged the National
Assembly to expedite actions on its move to amend the enabling laws
that established them in order to get more funds.