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£ 220 Billion Stolen since Independence
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No less than 77 banks in the country lost N11.2 billion within a year to fraudsters, the Director, Transparency in Nigeria and Zero-Corruption coalition, Lilian Ekeanyanwu, has said.
Ekeanyanwu, who said this at a workshop organised by the Code of Conduct Bureau, Abuja, said that 77 out of the 99 banks operating in the country recorded 796 cases of fraud in 2002. |
She said that records at the disposal of her organisation showed that 220 billion pound sterling were said to have been stolen by the country’s past leaders since independence.
“This will amount to 300 years of aid from the UK to the African continent and the equivalent of the aid from all the western countries to Africa in the past 40 years,” Ekeanyanwu said.
She added that EFCC’s 2005 records showed that 55 billion pound sterling which included the country’s money and assets were stocked in various accounts in different countries.
Speaking at the occasion, the bureau’s Director of Investigation and Monitoring, Mustapha Buba, said that the media had caused undue interference with the investigation of cases by the bureau.
Buba said that sometimes the media came in with uninformed commentary either discrediting the conduct of investigation or setting agenda as to how it expected the investigation to be carried out.
He said: “In other instances, interference may come by way of a rally in support of the suspect by political associates and hanger-on.
“Yet, in some cases political interference may brought to bear in the conduct of an investigation,” Buba added.
According to the director, some suspects are known to employ all the tricks under the sun to mutilate, destroy or hide material evidence particularly when they know that the evidence Act is very strict.” He said that such acts were being perpetuated in connivance with the beneficiaries of the crime or
sympathisers.
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