Less than a week after President Goodluck Jonathan honoured the late Head of State, Gen. Sani Abacha, with an award for “his contributions to the nation,” the United States has ordered a freeze on $458m in assets stolen by the former dictator and his accomplices.
The United States Justice Department yesterday moved to...
seize more than half a billion dollars of alleged corrupt proceeds from former a former Head of State, the late Gen. Sani Abacha and his associates, in what officials called the largest such action in US history.
In a court filing unsealed yesterday in a federal court in Washington, D.C., and obtained from the US Justice Department website , government lawyers said the US has already frozen more than $458 million in bank accounts around the world, and seeks to recover at least $100 million more.
The US government has moved to freeze $313 million in accounts in the Bailiwick of Jersey and $145 million in accounts in France. There are also investment portfolios and bank accounts in the United Kingdom worth at least $100 million that the US has targeted, the official said.
“This is the largest civil forfeiture
action to recover the proceeds of foreign official corruption ever
brought by the department,” said Mythili Raman, acting assistant
attorney general.
“General Abacha was one of the most
notorious kleptocrats in memory, who embezzled billions from the people
of Nigeria, while millions lived in poverty,” she said.
Under the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, the Justice Department seeks to seize the proceeds of foreign officials’ corruption and return the money to the harmed countries.
Abacha died in office in 1998, but his surviving relatives still include some of the richest and most influential figures in Nigeria.
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