EFCC reveals new strategy used by politicians to legitimize illegal wealth

EFCC reveals new strategy used by politicians to legitimize illegal wealth

The EFCC has revealed a new strategy being used by certain politicians to legitimize illegally obtained wealth. This involves claiming ownership of assets before they have actually acquired them.

The Chairman of the EFCC described how a politically exposed individual reported owning a mansion valued at over N3 billion before construction on it had even begun.

The Chairman of the EFCC, Ola Olukoyede, revealed this on Tuesday in Abuja during the introduction of an online tool related to the Code of Conduct for public officials.

He said, “There is something that I feel hasn’t been mentioned at today’s event, and I feel that if it has not been put in the code, I think it should be there, going by virtue of the work we do.

“I will give you an example. There was an investigation we carried out, and we discovered something not too strange but proves the ingenuity and the criminally smart way that some of our politically exposed persons carried out some of the nefarious activities we investigated them for.

“There was a matter we carried out and we investigated. I told my guys, just get the Code of Conduct Bureau forms and look at them. There’s something I’m not comfortable with in this report.

“So they got the CCB form. We looked at it. We discovered that one of the very big properties valued well over N3bn that the person declared in the CCB form.

“We saw that the address that was in the CCB form was different from the one that the person put down, from the particular address where that particular property was located. So I felt something was amiss. So we decided to dig further, carried out more interrogation, and we discovered that the person declared the property when the property was not yet in existence.

“After the person won an election, I won’t mention any name, but you should be able to decipher. Before he was sworn in, he got the asset declaration form and put a particular number, as a big mansion owned by him, bequeathed to him by whomever he couldn’t mention. By the time we investigated and looked, we discovered where the asset was, and we discovered the asset on number 44.

“He declared 39, but the asset is the buildings at number 44. So while we are asking questions, we eventually discovered what we call the anticipatory declaration of assets.

“And that is the smart way that some of these leaders have resorted to now. Now, they declare what they intend to acquire by the time they are in office before they are sworn in to office. It’s terrible. We saw that and we felt, no, this is pretty bad.

“And unfortunately for him, he was so devilishly smart that he had already registered the property that he didn’t own at the time at the land registry. He designed the mansion that he wanted to build there. So in other words, before he was sworn in, he had started thinking about the money to steal and what to do with the money.

“So he designed the mansion that he wants to acquire by the time he gets to the office. So we felt this was a bit odd and we should begin to look into this.

“You will be seeing more of that. So your investigative capacity, by the time you examine some of these forms, will help us to ensure that we drive home our mandate.

“Leaders must not be allowed to plan their looting before they even take the oath of office.”