The Chairman,
Senate Committee on Drugs, Narcotics, Financial Crimes and anti-corruption,
Senator Victor Lar, while defending the agency’s 2015 budget on Friday a
whopping sum of £14m (N4.4bn) was spent to secure the conviction of former
Governor James Ibori, in the United Kingdom on April 17, 2012.
The senator
stressed the need to amend the enabling laws of the Independent Corrupt
Practices Commission and Other Related Offences Commission, the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission, and the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, so
that they could be receiving their funds directly.
Lar said,
“All the convictions were secured with very limited or no funds. People are
quick to celebrate the conviction of James Ibori in the UK. The truth is that
to secure Ibori’s conviction, a whopping sum of £14m was expended.
“That is
almost N4.4bn which is more than 10 years recurrent and capital budgets of all
the anti-corruption agencies put together.”
Lar added
that other countries were able to prosecute financial crimes successfully
because a percentage of funds recovered from the proceeds of crime was usually
retained by the recovering agency for funding its activities.
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