About 40 Sports Utility Vehicles has been recovered from a retired former permanent secretary by the government.
Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed
The Federal Government yesterday said it was compiling an asset
tracing team that will work with reputable international bodies to trace
and recover public assets in private hands, Daily sun reports.
This comes into view after the government recovered about 40 Sports
Utility Vehicles (SUVs) and other vehicles from a retired permanent
secretary.
This was revealed by the Minister of Information and Culture,
Alhaji Lai Mohammed, who stated this in a statement issued in Lagos,
yesterday, said the fight against corruption was actually being guided
by a well-articulated strategy contrary to the misconception in some
quarters.
Mohammed stated that the identity of the retired permanent
secretary will remain hidden for now so as not to jeopadise the level of
investigations.
Mohammed said the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) will, from next
year, commence electronic asset declaration to facilitate compliance,
including the search and retrieval of data on the assets of public
officers, as part of its comprehensive anti-corruption strategy.
He noted that government was not just obsessed about prosecution
alone, but was also taking preventive measures to make corruption
unattractive.
Mohammed itemised some milestones of the administration’s
anti-corruption strategy to include the recovery of 40 brand new SUVs
and other vehicles from an unnamed former permanent secretary, who
single-handedly appropriated the vehicles to himself, strict enforcement
of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) and the constant fishing out of
ghost workers in the public service, among others.
“In this regard, government will also escalate the use of
non-conviction-based asset recovery methods to boost revenue and
diminish corruption and the perception that crime pays or criminals can
keep their loot. The Federal Government is getting Nigerians in diaspora
and international civil society organisations involved in the campaign
for the return of looted assets,’’ the minister stated.
Other measures already perfected to strengthen the anti-corruption
fight, Mohammed said, were the establishment of the Presidential
Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC), Presidential Committee on
Asset Recovery and the Asset Tracing Committee; the setting up of an
Asset Register as well as the Whistleblower policy.
Besides, he said PACAC was working with relevant Ministries,
Departments and Agencies (MADs), especially the National Bureau of
Statistics (NBS), to improve data collection on corruption indicators
generally.
The minister stated that it was on the recommendation of PACAC that
a centralised management of recovered looted assets was put in place,
through the Central Asset Management Committee under the leadership of
Minister of Finance as legal custodian of government assets.
He emphasised that the move has reduced the opportunity for
re-looting of recovered assets as was prevalent under the previous
regime, explaining that the “EFCC, ICPC and all asset recovery law
enforcement agencies are mandatorily required to furnish the Minister of
Finance with full details of recovered asset whether cash or
otherwise.”
He assured that data reconciliation will soon be completed and the information made available to the public.
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