Enrico Monfrini, the Swiss lawyer hired by the Nigerian
government since 1999 to work on recovering monies looted by Sani Abacha, says
his work has secured the restitution of more than $2.4 billion.
Working with Mohammed Adoke, the then attorney-general of
the federation, Monfrini had recently traced about $321 million to
Liechtenstein and Luxembourg, and the monies were kept in the custody of the
attorney-general of Switzerland until its final return to Nigeria.
In an interview with the BBC, the lawyer said he is still
waiting for the repatriation of $144 million from France, another $30 million
from the United Kingdom and a further $18 million in Jersey which he had
secured.
The late former military ruler was believed to have
laundered over $5 billion between 1993 and 1998.
“At the beginning people said Abacha stole at least
$4-$5billion. I don’t believe it was the case. I believe we more or less took
the most, took a very large chunk of what they had,” he said.
He said when he looks back, he is satisfied with the job he
did, as he now hears that the Abachas “are not swimming in money like they used
to do in the past”.
“When I speak to my very many children about this case, I
tell them I found money and I blocked the money, I persuaded the authorities to
go after these people and get the money back to the country for the good of the
Nigerian people. We did the job,” he said.
Finding the money, Monfrini said, turned out to be
relatively quick in comparison to getting it returned to Nigeria.
He said the Abachas “were fighting like dogs” as they were
appealing about everything, and this delayed the process.
“We would find out on each account exactly where the money
came from and/or where the money went to,” he said.
“Showing the ins and outs on these bank accounts gave me
further information regarding other payments received from other countries and
sent to other countries.
“So it was like a snowball. It started with a few accounts,
and then a large amount of accounts, which in turn created a snowball effect
indicating a huge international operation.
“Bank accounts and the documents that go with them talk a
lot.
“We had so much proof of different money being sent here and
there, Bahamas, Nassau, Cayman Islands – you name it.
“Nobody seems to understand how much work it entails. I have
to pay so many people, so many accountants, so many other lawyers in different
countries.”
He also narrated how a high-ranking government official had
called him for the job in 1999.
He said the official had asked him if he could find and
block the money, and he said yes.
“Can you arrange that this money be returned to Nigeria?’ “I
said: ‘Yes.’ But in fact I didn’t know much about the work at that time. And I
had to learn very quickly, so I did.”
The controversy around the appointment
of Oladipo Okpeseyi and Temitope Adebayo, two Nigerian lawyers hired by
Abubakar Malami, the current AGF, to duplicate the job already done by
Monfrini.
The two lawyers were both members of the Congress for
Progressive Change (CPC), the party founded by Buhari to contest in the 2011
presidential election. Malami was the legal adviser to the party.
In a series of interviews with TheCable, Monfrini had
maintained that the engagement of new lawyers was needless as he already
completed the recovery job and all that was left was for Malami was to “write a
letter to the Geneva attorney-general or the government of Switzerland
requesting the money to be paid back to Nigeria.”
Despite the outcry, the government secretly paid the two
lawyers $17 million “dubious fee.”
Monfrini, who agreed to a commission of 4 per cent on the
money sent back to Nigeria, in the BBC interview, however, said the rate he
agreed to was comparably “very cheap”.
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