The Justice Department has returned tens of millions of dollars in funds looted from Nigerian state coffers by late head of state Sani Abacha.
“The United States, through the Department of Justice and the FBI, forfeited approximately $23 million traceable to the corruption and money laundering of former Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha and his co-conspirators. This money will be returned to the Nigerian people through an agreement between the Governments of the United States and the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” the DoJ said in a press release Tuesday.
According to DoJ calculations, the return of the $23 million brings the total repatriation of Abacha cash to Nigeria to $334.7 million, with $311.7 million of that recovered from the Bailiwick of Jersey, a UK Crown dependency and well known tax haven.
“This repatriation of $23 million reflects the Justice Department’s unwavering commitment to recover and return corruption proceeds laundered through the US financial system,” Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. was quoted as saying in the release.
The DoJ promised to eventually recover “100 percent” of the assets stolen by Abacha.
Nigerian Attorney General and Justice Minister Abubakar Malami said the recovered funds would be used to fund large-scale infrastructure projects across the African nation. “The president’s mandate to my office is to ensure that all international recoveries are transparently invested and monitored by civil society organizations to compete for these three projects within the agreed timeline,” he said.
Abacha seized power in a military coup in late 1993, and ruled the country until his death of a heart attack in June 1998 at the age of 54. Abacha’s Nigeria was suspended from the Commonwealth of Nations in 1995 over the executions of nine environmental activists, including Nobel Peace Prize nominee Ken Saro-Wiwa, and the US State Department slapped his regime on the wrist for human rights offenses and graft.
However, dollars seemed to speak louder than words, and US and European energy companies continued ramp up investments in the oil-rich nation throughout Abacha’s tenure in office, while US lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, visited the country to express support for his government.
Transparency International Estimates that Abacha pilfered up to $5 billion in public money during his rule, stashing the ill-gotten assets in the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Germany and France. UK-headquartered banking giant HSBC is thought to have laundered more than 100 million pounds-worth of cash for Abacha before his untimely death. Decades on, the bank has fiercely resisted demands to return the money, with the Nigerian government taking it and the British National Crime Agency to court.